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Chapter 108: Alp Attack

Honestly, I didn’t really believe Astintash was in much trouble here. It was possible that the army would be able to kill it, but it was just as possible that the Dragon would wipe them out before they could. Or, at the very least, it could escape and fly away.

Sure, it was taking heavy fire from dozens of projectiles every second, but this was a Dragon we were talking about. Not only did they have insane amounts of Health, but they also had heaps of abilities to raise their defenses even more. Even if Astintash stopped resisting right now and just let them kill it, it’d still probably take over an hour for them to actually reduce its Health to 0.

So, by offering to help the Dragon, it wasn’t like we had this massive bargaining chip of ‘we’re saving your life’ to hang over its head. However, it obviously did seem like Astintash had underestimated these forces – otherwise, it wouldn’t have let itself get attacked like this. It obviously didn’t like getting hurt, even if it wouldn’t technically die, and it wouldn’t have let it happen on purpose. It was currently at least a bit in over its head.

And this wasn’t even all of the soldiers. There were more back at the wall. So, while we didn’t have the power over whether Astintash lived or died, we did have the bargaining chip that it was now obvious to the Dragon how much it’d need our help to take that fort down. After all, if this was just a portion of their forces, and they were still able to harm it, just how bad would things be when they were hidden behind a one-way magic barrier it couldn’t even break through?

It’d obviously been having trouble taking them out in the past, but back then they were just some annoying people holed up in a valley. Now they were actively encroaching on Astintask’s territory. It’d certainly realized by now that, if it couldn’t take out that wall, it’d either have to deal with attacks like these forever, or permanently move to a different home. And judging by the beast’s ego, I didn’t think it wanted to admit defeat and run away.

So now we offered a much more desired solution – we could take care of this problem once and for all.

It was with that in mind that I looked over to where I assumed the Dryad was – she was still invisible, just like Erani and I – and spoke to her, “I want you to send a message to the Dragon for me. It’s too dangerous for me to move in and draw attention to our location. Are you close enough to speak to it from here?”

“Yes,” she said. “Can talk to Dragon.”

“Okay. Tell it we want to help, but we also want to make sure it won’t kill us if we do. And be sure to use its full name when you talk to it. Dragons appreciate that sort of thing.” It was a shame I couldn’t do the discussion myself, considering I was the only one with actual memory of what’d happened in the past, but I trusted the Dryad to say the right things. She could be a bit tough to understand at first, but as long as she was respectful, we’d be fine. And I’d be coaching her through what to say, anyway.

There was a moment where Astintash froze up, glancing around as it obviously received the transmission from the Dryad. It of course took fire during this time, but it shielded its face with its wings while it seemed to try and focus on what was happening inside its head. After a few seconds, it came back out and started fighting back against the army again, and the Dryad spoke to me once more.

“It says it will not kill us as long as we are friendly. Can we trust?”

“Yeah, probably,” I said. “Its life isn’t strictly in danger here, but it probably would like some help, especially with the siege weapons in the back that it can’t reach right now. And, from a long-term perspective, it definitely needs our help if it wants to take down the wall. We’re the only one with the knowledge to destroy the shield, and the enemy is only getting more powerful with time – this assault may as well prove that to the Dragon. So it\'s either take down the wall right now, or be forced to deal with constant attacks for the rest of its life. Or run away and find a new home. It wants to take that first option, and it’ll need us to do it.”

The Dryad paused to think for a second. “So we offering to help it for nothing?”

“What? No, we’re offering to help because it’ll help us get through the valley, too.”

“But get nothing in return.”

“...We get to pass through the valley in return. The wall will be destroyed.”

“But Dragon is giving us nothing. Dragon receives our help but gives nothing away. We can ask for something too, correct?”

“Well, I guess,”

I frowned. What exactly was she getting at? “But I don’t really think it has anything we want. Not like it’s keeping some random Enchanted gear in a display case in its cave, or anything. And if we ask for too much, like a ride all the way to the Barinruth Empire, it’ll just kill us for the insulting request.”

I heard shuffling from beside me and saw footprints heading toward the battlefield – was the Dryad moving? “Does have something I want. Something it can give away.”

“What do you– wait!” I stood and reached out, trying to blindly grab her arm, but it seemed she was already dashing down the hill toward the battlefield.

“What’s going on?” I heard Erani ask. She must’ve heard the movement from the Dryad leaving.

“I– I don’t know,” I shook my head. “I asked her to negotiate with Astintash for me, and it seemed like it was going well. But then she suddenly started talking about how we should be getting paid by Astintash for our help, and then ran off before I could try to ask her what was going on.”

“What? What would she even want from it?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering,” I gazed off into the chaotic battle ahead of us. Her invisibility would probably keep her safe from everything, but why would she even need to get close to Astintash? She could talk to it just fine from here.

“What are we even supposed to do, then?”

“I guess we just do what the original plan was. We move along the sidelines and destroy as much of the siege equipment as we can – especially those chains that are holding it down. And try not to get hit in the process. Don’t want my invisibility falling off of me in the middle of a battlefield.”

“Guess that makes sense,” Erani said. “Let’s go.”

We both got out from behind our cover to slide down the hill and toward the battlefield as well. Thankfully, nobody seemed to notice our invisible bodies pushing aside plants or kicking up dust due to the absolute chaos that was the fight raging in front of them, so Erani and I were able to sneak forward and toward the back of the enemy ranks, where they kept their siege weaponry – ballistas and cannons, mainly.

I’d quickly lost where the Dryad was the moment she entered the battlefield; keeping track of her footprints among hundreds of soldiers running around, shockwaves from Astintash swiping at anything that got close, and bright swaths of fire breath sweeping the burnt and broken landscape was functionally impossible.

But judging by the direction she’d been moving at first, I suspected I knew where she was going – straight to Astintash. And from the looks of Astintash’s face while it fought, I could tell that they were communicating in some way as she approached.

I voiced my suspicions to Erani as we continued to work our way around the main forces and toward the back ranks of the army. Part of our conversation was to plan and strategize before we entered enemy ranks, and the other part was just to keep both of us talking so we could keep basic track of where the other was. I noticed that, during any moments when we were silent, it became increasingly difficult to make sure we stuck together.

“So she’s going toward Astintash, you think?” Erani asked. “She isn’t responding to what I say, other than simple one-word replies to the basic stuff. Apparently she’s too busy focusing on negotiations with that Dragon and with avoiding stray attacks to also worry about talking with me. But why wouldn’t she go and help us take down the siege weapons, too?”

“No idea,” I said. “She kept asking about whether we could get something from it in return for helping, since it\'s in so much trouble right now. I said we might be able to, but I had no idea what it had that we’d want and that it’d be willing to give away. Then she seemed to have some sort of idea and just sprinted off. So I guess she’s trying to get whatever that thing is? I just hope she doesn’t fuck us over with this.”

“She probably knows what she’s doing, if she’s that confident.”

“She’s also two years old.”

Erani pursed her lips. “That’s true.”

I just sighed and shook my head. “Not much we can do now. It’s not exactly easy to change her mind when she’s set on doing something.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

We kept moving in silence, but I couldn’t stop trying to guess at what she wanted. “Index, do you know what they’re doing?”

“Well, of course I know, but I can’t tell you. You are aware of what they’re bartering over right now, though.”

“What do you mean, I’m aware of it?”

“I mean you’ve heard of the thing before. You know it exists.”

I wracked my memory, trying to think of some sort of object I knew Dragons had in their possession. Maybe the Dryad wanted a tooth, or a scale, or something? People often took parts of dead monsters as trophies and sometimes as alchemical ingredients and things like that, but I couldn’t think of any reason a Dryad would want something like that. Crafting things out of monster parts was definitely more of a Human thing.

…Wait. Thinking for a moment, I could identify something she may be able to gain from this. But that… there was no way she was trying to do that, right? I mean, how could she take a risk so massive? Sure, that’d mean a huge boost in power, but there was no way the Dragon would do it. I had to be wrong.

“Arlan?” Erani’s voice shook me from my thoughts. We’d arrived at the edge of the army’s forces. The group wasn’t exactly organized, at this point. It was more a frantic surge of some people trying to get as far away from the massive Dragon as possible, some people trying to prevent the others from deserting, and yet more trying to operate the siege weapons in the middle of the chaos than a proper army.

Really, it was mainly the Humans that were fleeing and the Demons that were doing everything else. It was known that Demons didn’t experience ‘true death’ if they died in the Overworld – or, at least, sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t – but I hadn’t heard much more than that. So apparently they were fine with just being killed by the Dragon for the cause of killing me.

But even still, the weapons they shot could deal quite a bit of damage to Astintash. Plus, I could count three of the magical chain weapons located here, too – there were more scattered around the battlefield that had attached themselves to its scales, but I suspected that even taking out a few would free it up enough to break off the others on its own.

“Let’s just continue with the plan,” I whispered. “Take out the siege weapons and Astintash will know we mean well.”

Erani confirmed with a grunt, and I took a moment to put a stack of Expedite on both of us. I’d unfortunately not had enough time to regenerate all of my Mana, but the extra Mana/Minute from Exponential Reclamation still helped out quite a bit – plus Light Plate helped to discount my Spells as always.

After casting Expedite twice, I was left at just over 300 Mana. Not much, but hopefully enough to get the job done. Erani was our main source of firepower when it came to destroying these weapons, anyway, considering she was the one with explosion magic, so ideally I wouldn’t have to cast much in the first place. I’d essentially serve as bodyguard and distraction, considering it was hardly possible to blow a bunch of shit up without drawing at least a bit of enemy attention.

Glancing over, I still couldn’t quite see what was going on with the Dryad. At the very least, not seeing her meant she hadn’t yet been hit and was still invisible. And whatever was going on, it looked like Astintash was still taking moments to pause and respond to whatever she was saying to it, so it seemed things were going well.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said.

And, in an instant, Erani leapt to her feet and shot off a Firebolt, blowing up the first of the three nearby chain launchers. One out of three down, so we were making good progress.

Then, of course, every Infernal and Human near us turned to look at the source of the Firebolt that just blew up in the middle of their army. And, even though they didn’t technically see us, I could tell they recognized Erani’s now-signature Spell.

They knew we were here, we just had to make sure they didn’t know where in ‘here’ we were. And that was where my main job of distraction would come in.

It was time to join this already-chaotic wreck of a battle, and make it just a bit messier.