Infinite Paths: The Raging Phoenix

"AAaaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhh!" Numerous soldiers shouted in agony.

Somehow, the buckets didn\'t melt, but they were filled with acid. As expected, the enemies had a lot of time to prepare for that… it wasn\'t clear that they had prepared much more or if the whole situation was an ambush, but that was a bad starting point.

Despite that, not much damage had been caused on the human side. A lot of people were suffering, but no casualties took place in the first attack… but then the second wave of acid came.

"Fall back ten meters. They won\'t hit us if we keep our distance!" A random royal guard shouted. "Approach the gate and keep your guard up!"

The army moved to the sides and toward the wall, and Branden couldn\'t help but frown. Imagining that they would act like that was easy, so the enemies had the chance to prepare some traps… they had the quicksand executioner\'s on their side, so making traps wasn\'t an issue for them…

The humans began to hit the southern gate, and while the wooden doors fell pretty fast, soon the soldiers found a massive block of concrete blocking their path… it wasn\'t concrete, but it was something quite hard and big enough to cover the entire gate without leaving any openings.

The human side flinched once they began to attack the massive brick, but their attacks only caused small scratches… naturally, while that wasn\'t their specialty, the quicksand executioners also could harden the ground, and they had a lot of time to make something like that.

"It seems that they found one hell of a wall on the gate…" Jori said.

"They learned their lesson, and they won\'t do half-assed things anymore after losing Tristan; I guess this is my fault," Branden said.

The humans retreated for a bit since they didn\'t know what to do. The commander of that size called for a retreat in order to regroup and assess the situation. Thanks to that failed attempt, they lost some men, but not much.

"The only option is to climb the walls, right?" Reca asked. "Do they have the tools for that?"

"To some extent," Branden said while rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

Branden realized that Rain could easily solve that problem if he had some mana. However, he was still working on surprising the enemies. In any case, at least the humans didn\'t attack for another half an hour, and that gave the group some time to think and some time for Rain to work.

"The progress, Rain?" Branden asked.

"Three hundred more meters," Rain replied.

Branden felt like clicking his tongue, and in the end, he decided to go and help Rain.

He felt like he put too much trust in him… his mana was full, and while earth magic wasn\'t his forte, he knew that he could finish most of the job… Still, he stopped when he saw Rain using earth magic to make the dirt fall from the wall while he also covered his fingers in wind magic while he attacked the walls of dirt with his hands.

Branden lit the area with a fireball since he felt a troublesome smell in the air, and soon, he saw Rain\'s fingers covered in blood and dirt. Branden took a deep breath… Rain had been working on that tunnel day and night for four days already. In the first place, a tunnel this long couldn\'t be made by a single person that easily in a meter of days.

In the end, Branden decided to step back and let Rain do his work… no one could have done something like that better than him. Once he returned outside, Branden saw the human army moving again… if only they weren\'t so impatient, Rain could finish the tunnel before noon, and once the group was inside the city, they would be able to cause havoc and split the enemy\'s focus.

Still, things can never be that convenient.

"We need to do something without being noticed," Liss said. "If the enemies are plotting something, then we need to stop their plans and make the city fall before they can put it into practice."

"Rain will need two or three more hours before he finishes the tunnel, but while I am not scared of punishment, if we do something obvious and the enemies confirm our presence, then we won\'t be able to surprise them," Branden said.

It was clear that Branden didn\'t have a plan right now, so the whole group had to think about it together and fast. Anything too flashy was no good; they also couldn\'t use too much energy. Otherwise, they wouldn\'t be able to do much when they reached the other side… it felt like they truly couldn\'t do a thing.

"My apologies. You can say that planning ahead is my strong point, but improvising isn\'t," Branden said and then sighed.

"It can\'t be helped, sir," Jori said. "This situation wasn\'t something that anyone could have prepared for."

"Besides, while we are suffering casualties, the enemies are also losing some manpower," Terra said while pointing to a group of archers that were using the magic crossbows that Jori\'s group got last year."

Behind each army, there was a group of fifty archers with the crossbows. While those weapons weren\'t that powerful from a distance longer than fifty meters, they could travel three hundred meters with no problems… numerous magic people were being hit by those on the walls, and then they dropped the buckets filled with ice nearby them, causing havoc among their ranks.

"We have to be patient, huh?" Asche asked. "Still, I wonder how they produce their acid when some of them can fire bones from their palms…"