The Systemic Lands
Chapter 260: Day 536 (2) – The Last Few Options

There was only some minor cleanup I had to do at the North. After that I returned to the Airship Port. “That went well,” General Smith said as he sat down with Clarissa and myself.

“But we are still in trouble. The Ritualist has fallen to less than half his initial strength, with only 1,000 to 1,200 hybrids, but he still has his super worm. Can we hold a push in force on the plaza?” Clarissa asked.

“No. We can’t. Unless you have something Champion Michael?” the General asked me. I shook my head at the question.

“It is the sheer number, and I will need to be on hand to fight the Ritualist himself and his super worm,” I replied ruminating on the fight yet to come.

“Will you act?” the General asked Clarissa.

“Yes, don’t worry about that. But killing the Ritualist takes priority. I am thinking we engage in attritional warfare from the wall to the plaza. Force the Ritualist to divide his forces,” Clarissa said.

“No. Splitting our forces will lead to a break down in communication. The Ritualist can control everything instantly. Spreading out plays to his strength, we need to consolidate here at the plaza. We leave the breach in the inner wall to the East and build fortifications on top,” the General said.

“Cutting out chunks of other buildings?” I asked.

“Yes. To form a makeshift wall. Better to put people to work and save the points for restorations,” the General replied.

“Staying in the plaza sounds like the best idea, but how will we stop the wave of monsters?” I asked.

“And that is where I am coming up short,” the General said and looked at Clarissa who shook her head.

“My trump cards will only be useful once he breaks into the plaza and preferably if he is here in person. I will use them all at the same time. But until we reach that point of desperation, using them sooner is too much of a risk that they won’t do enough,” Clarissa said. The General looked at me.

“We will lose people Champion Michael. The losses are already starting to build up,” he softly said. I nodded at that.

“Then they are the losses we will have. Clarissa has my trust and I know what she is planning. Saving them as trump cards is the correct thing to do. We should also expect a full attack the moment the City Shield goes down,” I replied.

“I will make sure everyone is ready then. But the issue remains. How to stop that many monsters,” the General said, and we were all silent.

“We need to create a stand off situation. Cycle the Radiant Beam users. The issue will be that all sides will be pressed at once and flying monsters. What about our summons?” I asked.

“Will be getting ready as quickly as possible once the shield falls. They will help keep the skies clear and scout, but ground combat, they suffer,” the General explained, and I nodded. In the air, a lower level monster could latch on and drag a higher level monster to the ground. On the ground, the higher level monster could just stomp the lower level monster or ignore it for the most part.

I thought about how to slow down or stop the horde and looked at Clarissa. “We will have to hold regardless. If he pushes, we will have to fight regardless. It will be messy and chaotic. But there is no other choice. I need to be on hand to fight the super worm and the Ritualist himself.”

“I understand. Well, we have time. I will organize our final lines of defense and see to the breach,” the General said.

“Can we move buildings where the rubble is?” I asked. Using solid buildings as the inner wall was quite a good idea and while I didn’t remember who had initially come up with the idea, I thought it was quite brilliant to have a second line of defense much closer to the plaza. Clarissa shook her head.

“No. It needs to repaired while no one is looking at the buildings or we can pay to repair it ourselves. But no infinitely regenerating walls. Even then the breach isn’t the worst thing, it would encourage the Ritualist to push for that point. And we hold the high ground on the roof tops, which makes defense easier,” Clarissa said.

“Until he breaks into the buildings and they will become charnel houses. Even if we are concentrating the populace into the Champion’s home, it will become a problem for a long term siege,” the General replied.

“Will we have a long term siege?” I asked.

“That is question for you. You understand the Ritualist the best,” Clarissa replied, and I let out a sigh.

“If both options are equal, he will push. If one option makes him feel he has a greater chance of winning, then he will take that option. What if he gets monsters up on the outer buildings and bombards us?” I asked. That would be how I did things to sweep the roof tops. There was a long pause after that question which was not a good sign.

“I will arrange to cut out blocks and move them to the top of buildings and the walls,” the General said. I nodded at that. He was earning his paycheck managing our forces.

“The defenses will be in your hands General,” I replied, and he nodded. Sᴇaʀᴄh the ɴøᴠel Fɪre.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

“Hopefully we make it through this. Good luck Champion Michael, Clarissa,” he said and took his leave.

“Do you want me to use my trump cards early?” Clarissa asked me. I considered the question carefully and all three of her trump cards.

“No. The losses are acceptable. Only if we are on the verge of defeat. Make your best judgement. Once we use them, we need to win no matter what. If the Ritualist escapes again, this nightmare will never end. I suspect he feels the same way,” I replied.

“You can’t die Michael. If you die, then all this, it will go up in flames,” Clarissa said.

“I have no plans to make myself a martyr. Trust me on that. But I will be taking risks to kill the Ritualist if I think there is a good shot at succeeding even if it is a hassle. That was the mistake I made last time. I shouldn’t have let up against an enemy and kept going after them until they were crushed,” I said.

“Well, you were right. This conflict is entrenching us into the minds of the people,” Clarissa replied.

“Us?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“My people spread the rumors, so I am going to take advantage of them. If we win our political position at the top of the hierarchy will be unassailable for a long time,” Clarissa said.

“We will win. Have no doubt about that. It is just a question of how much pain and difficulty we will experience first,” I replied and stood up. “I am going to try and get some rest before tomorrow, so I am in my best condition. Wake me if the Ritualist does anything,” I ordered.

“I will,” Clarissa said. I took the elevator down the Airship Port this time and made my way to my room. The monochrome coloration of everything was throwing me off. Whatever the City Shield was doing was freaky.

I made my way to my room and carefully took off my armor and put it on a table. I then lay down on my bed. Realistically I should have kept attacking last night with the expectation of being able to rest right now. The only issue with that plan was that I needed to be ready if the Ritualist pulled out some nonsense to counter the City Shield.

Once the City Shield fell, then things would get much more difficult. We had depleted over half his army, but we were down by about a third of our good fighters and half of the gray shirts. All our people were tired, and the City Shield would help give time to mentally recover. The Ritualist would struggle to feed his army when it was spread out, so they would weaken slightly.

We had a good defensive position with the buildings around the plaza. We just didn’t have the numbers we needed to defend the inner wall in force. Each of the Ritualist’s hybrids was a heavy hitter at a low level 3, while most of our fighters would fall into a low level 2 at best.

If we could trade one for one, then we would win, but the recent fights had us at a ratio of around or a bit less than two to one. It wasn’t terrible, but we couldn’t sustain that and hope for victory. The problem with Clarissa’s trump cards was that she needed to target the Ritualist directly with all three at the same time, otherwise the element of surprise would be ruined.

Even then, we would need to hold out for a full day. She didn’t say that, but we needed to do that much once the City Shield fell. I still couldn’t believe what she had managed to pull off. But she was the Chief Administrator and was able to cook the books to such a degree. I also knew it was a test from her since I looked over the accounting books to see how much she could get away with. She wasn’t getting away with anything. I could look at numbers with the best of them and work through what they had told me.

What was concerning me was the super worm. As I lay in my bed with my eyes closed, I could see the armored super worm in my mind. Each scale could resist tremendous amounts of energy. Why only one of these worms? What was its weakness?

The Ritualist had merged crystals physically with his body. He would never test something out on himself first. He would test things on his monsters. No, one monster. The large worms were some of the best things he had due to their bulk. The pulsing red coloration absorbed energy, but the flesh of the super worm had been brown.

That was one of the more basic and stable colorations. But the scales had a metal sheen to them. Like the metal sphere we encountered on the way to the East Bastion. The super worm wasn’t a hybrid obviously, but investing so much into a summon was a huge risk. Could the Ritualist have captured a monster and tried to tame it directly by implanting crystals? Would there be an advantage to doing that?

Any taming attempts had failed and combining crystals with system generated monsters. They would just turn to dust. So, the Ritualist was probably using a summon, but without a human as a base, how would he mix and match crystals to empower the monster?

He could place a crafting crystal into each scale and physically merge it like he had merged crystals with himself. I was guessing Imbue Reform was the skill he was using, since the dungeon it came from was close to Heaven. Armor up the super worm with energy repelling scales.

Then juice up the worm itself with a high level of regeneration. Now it was all coming together. The super worm was the Ritualist’s answer to me in direct combat before he went and screwed himself up. The worm would repel my acid attacks and would be physically hard to damage. Its sheer bulk, size, and possible regeneration would make it incredibly hard to dust.

The only weakness was the Ritualist himself, but he wouldn’t go down easily. That was the problem with smart opponents, they could fix their weaknesses.

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