Episode 9. Ted's Siege Warfare (3)
Soon after, the Skill Orb attached to Black and White’s barrel gleamed.
Active (Mana Cost: 700 / Cooldown: 15 minutes)
Accumulates mana to fire a bullet of lightning.
Cast time: 3 seconds / After skill use, firearm becomes unavailable for 5 seconds due to overheating.
Attack power increases by 0.5% per 1% proficiency.
Ted checked the changed Charged Lightning.
There weren’t any major changes. It had merely gone from D-rank to C-rank.
However, the significance of that minor change was not small.
If attack power had previously ranged from 30% to 80% based on D-rank standards, it could now rise from 80% to 130%.
On top of that, the newly added option: a 2-second stun.
‘This can be used in anti-personnel combat too. Did I finally get an overdamage skill?’
Until now, no matter what skill Ted used, his damage had only been reduced.
But a maximum value of 130% was a damage increase far beyond anything he could have imagined.
‘I was trying to hunt level 400s… With this, I should be able to hunt level 500 monsters too.’
Even though the cooldown had grown longer and the mana cost had jumped from 400 to 700, he was satisfied.
‘But the Skill Orb’s name… Charged Lightning: Open? So it’s an extension-type Skill Orb.’
Exclusive Skill Orbs are skills that have no skill tree whatsoever.
There are no compatible higher-tier skills.
However, there were occasionally skills with names that seemed to be linked by the same skill tree.
Those were precisely the extension-type exclusive skills marked with the symbols Open (開) and Advance (進) beside the skill name.
Skill Orbs with similar names, similar attacks, but different options!
‘If it’s Charged Lightning at D and Charged Lightning: Open at C, then B would be Charged Lightning: Advance, right?’
Ted could deduce it from the simple sequence.
But for extension-type exclusive skills, the Advance that appears at B-rank is the end.
Here a question arises. The maximum rank of Skill Orbs that the Six Directions Star Seat can raise is S.
‘The skill’s form will probably change as it evolves to A and S.’
Because the rank was still low, there wasn’t a big change yet.
But if this surpassed A… then somehow, a change would come to the skill itself.
His idle thoughts ended there.
"Fire magic! We have to inflict maximum damage while they’re approaching!"
"Archers, use all your Awakening skills!"
"Fire shells! Boiling oil and enchanted logs, stand by!"
On the outer walls, they tensed at the approaching Pateuk army and solidified their defenses.
"Lord Ted. It would be best to avoid the front of the outer wall now."
Reunghaen, in charge of outer wall defense, urgently called for Ted.
"Wouldn’t it be good to shoot when they enter range?"
"Of course, that is true for the moment. But there must be a reason they are rushing in like that. Since there are unforeseen variables in this siege defense, it would be advantageous to pull back from the front for now and observe the situation as we defend."
It was a valid point.
Because Tenichi’s appearance was something no one had predicted.
This wasn’t a children’s fistfight; there would be no reason to deploy troops without confidence in a battle where massive sums of money were at stake.
If Ted didn’t have Indomitable, a single skill from Tenichi would kill him for certain.
Even with his equipment, his body wasn’t sturdy enough to block a level 600’s attack.
"Understood. I’ll fire one shot and then pull back to observe."
Ted used
Giiiiing—
Lightning sparks gathered just as before.
But the color was different. If it had been blue before, now it was a yellow light.
Pazzzzt—!
The lightning bolt that shot out was thicker in trunk than the previous Charged Lightning.
The streak of lightning instantly struck and tore apart dozens of approaching users.
Ted: 25,163
‘Hm. Good.’
Having checked the battle results, Ted withdrew from the front.
The number of users Ted had hunted alone was roughly over two thousand.
It was no wonder he had leveled up a whopping 30 times in mere hours.
‘I thought a siege would be a total loss.’
For a board he had thrown together hastily, the profit was immense.
‘Shall I look around a bit now?’
Ted gestured to the shamans.
It was a signal signifying the end of the temporarily formed special task force.
From now on, the shamans would devote their strength to defending the outer walls.
Below the outer wall was already a mess.
Pateuk’s army had begun hammering the gate with ranged attacks and all sorts of siege weapons they had prepared.
Moreover, countless Pateuk soldiers were scaling the walls.
In response, the Count’s forces mobilized all their mages to continuously cast reinforcement magic on the outer gate.
They also desperately blocked those climbing the walls, throwing enchanted logs at the scaling soldiers and pouring boiling oil to make the walls slippery.
Up until this point, it was the typical, attritional sight of siege warfare.
"Ah! Over there! Blue heavy armor approaching!"
But then.
A user who stood out even among the many began rapidly approaching the gate.
Blue heavy armor. And a bastard sword as large as a person.
He alone charged into the outer gate where siege magic and cannons were pouring down.
"Huh? What’s with that guy?"
"If he does that, won’t their own attacks hit him too?"
Until then, the Pateuk side had been relentlessly firing shells, boulders, and magic to break the outer gate.
Attacks in Face Chronicle did not discriminate between friend and foe.
In other words, if he clung to the outer gate, Tenichi would be hit as well.
"I’ll smash it apart!
Then, a blue dragon leaped from Tenichi’s body and coiled around him.
‘Isn’t that Protection of the Blue Dragon? That rare A-rank skill. +7 blue heavy armor… So it really is him.’
That blue heavy armor was a unique item worth over ten billion on the market, enhanced to +7 through soul imprinting.
From the armor, Ted was certain he was
The skill
Though the details were unknown, it was a broken skill that converted received damage into attack power for several minutes.
This time, perhaps because the staff office had grasped the enemy’s skill, the Sauron army’s response to Tenichi shifted from attacks to pushes, slows, and stuns.
But it meant little.
Because the ones supplying the damage were precisely the Pateuk camp.
Boom boom boom boom boom—!!
Soon, Tenichi, whose attack power had risen, began swinging his sword to destroy the gate.
"Shells and logs don’t work!"
"Oil, magic, and shamanism don’t work either!"
The reports came one after another.
"Him again…."
Reunghaen, the outer wall defense commander, made a sour expression.
The enemy camp’s massive shaman circle was still continuously bestowing HP and defense upon him.
The remaining recourse was to dispatch the Three Stars of the Count’s territory.
But deploying the Three Stars against Tenichi while that skill was maintained was simply sending them to their deaths.
‘Besides, who knows what other cards they hold….’
"All forces! Ordered to tactically retreat to the Great Plains!"
Reunghaen made the decision with a bitter taste in his mouth.
"Lord Ted. Let us go too."
But just as he gave the order and looked for Ted—
"Lord Ted?"
Ted, who had been beside him until moments ago, was nowhere to be seen.
‘There can’t be many minutes left now… I’ll have a go the moment Protection of the Blue Dragon expires. How many shots will Tenichi withstand?’
At that moment, Ted was aiming at Tenichi from a corner on the far side of the outer wall.
He had prepared to fire the instant Tenichi’s skill,
‘Has it ended?’
Soon, the blue light disappeared from the bastard’s body.
Confirming that, Ted immediately aimed Black and White at him.
Bang—
Veiled by the clamor of the battlefield, Ted’s attack fell upon the bastard.
"Huh?"
Hit by the bullet in his shoulder, Tenichi hastily moved and checked where the shot had come from.
A powerful bullet with final attack power in the 24,000s!
It was no small blow even to him, a mid-to-late level 600 character clad in +7 blue heavy armor and loaded with buff shamanisms.
More than 10% of his HP had vanished from a single attack.
‘Ahahaha! What the hell! So the lightning bastard shot this!’
In that instant, Tenichi used a
At the right side of the 12th watchtower on the right side of the outer wall. That
"Found him."
And Shaman Sage Ruri, who until then had not revealed herself while searching for the
In that instant, she unleashed a skill on him.
First, she had to push that man off the outer wall to gain entry.
"
Siege specialist, Parasitic Shaman Sage Ruri.
From her hands, advanced B-rank and higher shamanisms that had neutralized countless siege defenders until now stretched out one after another.
"What."
Ted had been calmly aiming at Tenichi as he withdrew.
But then, a change occurred around him while he hid on the wall sniping continuously.
Transparent barriers formed in all directions around him.
At the same time, one part of the transparent barrier tore open, and an eye emerged to glare at Ted.
"Uwah! What is this!"
"An enemy-made barrier has appeared!"
The urgent shouts of the soldiers.
The barrier was quite large.
Enough to sweep up all the soldiers around Ted.
The moment the suspicious skill was cast, Ted immediately moved to evade.
He tried to exit the domain using
But as his body rose into the air, a
It was an attack of the
‘A Shamanic Formation? There was a high-level shaman on their side? It’ll be bad if I get hit by that!’
Bang—!
Ted intercepted the incoming Formation with Black and White.
But the moment it was intercepted, two additional Formations flew in from both sides.
‘Triplicate Mirror! Damn it.’
A-rank shamanism, Triplicate Mirror!
It was a skill that used triple the mana to copy a single skill into three and fire them.
Through the Triplicate Mirror, Ted could identify the shaman on the other side.
The keywords were
‘Parasitic Shaman Sage… Ruri! Even such a ranker came here?’
Reaching that thought, the before and after of several mysteries clicked into place.
The
The reason it had evolved using Heketan as a host was precisely due to Ruri’s shamanism.
‘This is troublesome.’
Ted shattered another incoming Formation.
But he couldn’t destroy the last one.
Because the bullet cycle hadn’t returned.
Bang—!
Hit by the Formation, Ted fell from the outer wall.
The height was dozens of meters. Falling would mean serious injury.
But Ted used
Because shaman was his subclass, even after taking a Formation hit and falling to the ground, his HP only decreased by about 50%.
‘Ugh… Still, it’s fortunate I took out the
"Go bite any enemy soldier."
Weeeeeng….
If Indomitable activated, it would be troublesome. At Ted’s order, the Random Mosquito that had crossed over the outer wall attacked someone.
Having confirmed this, Ted frowned.
A-rank curse shamanism, Attack Blockade.
For Ted, who had zero shamanism resistance, he had no choice but to accept the full 10-minute duration of its effect.
‘Ten minutes… Should I move afterward? No, for now I should observe the changing situation as a whole.’
Ted moved inside the outer wall and joined the Count’s forces heading toward the Great Plains.
And he observed the state of the siege warfare.
‘I’ll have to watch the situation for a few hours.’
Because if he moved now, he was bound to have his location exposed by the Shaman Sage’s shamanisms.
The momentum had completely shifted to the Pateuk side.
A siege warfare led by two powerful specialists!
After attacking the gate for quite some time, Pateuk finally succeeded in smashing the outer gate.
At the same time, part of the outer walls began to crumble under continuous attacks.
In most castles of Face Chronicle, the
In other words, it was a structure where you had to destroy the gate to chip away at the walls’ durability.
They seemed to be demolishing part of the walls to wage total war.
Amidst this, some entered through the smashed outer gate.
They were Tenichi and four men and women who appeared to be Third Class changers.
"They’re coming inside the outer gate!"
"Pour all shelling and magic, and use the Three Stars to defeat the enemies entering through the gate one by one!"
At the Count’s order, the Three Stars (Third Class changers) who had been conserving their strength until now moved to stop them.
A war within a war of the Three Stars was about to break out at the outer gate.
‘I’ll have to jump in soon too.’
A few hours passed like that.
But Ted hadn’t just been watching the battlefield with folded arms during that time.
Screeeech—! Screech!
Until then, Ted had only been having the Goblin Trio hunt.
Per 1 hour cooldown, the trio’s activity time was 30 minutes.
Because of that, Ted was able to level up again from the experience the trio hunted.
Screech!
The Goblin Trio, whose summoning time was up, bumped their heads forward.
As if to say, "I did good, right?"
"Yeah. You did well. Rest up."
Ted patted their heads.
Soon the Goblin Trio turned to smoke and disappeared.
‘Now. It’s time to return to battle.
Thief’s Stealth differed from other skills in that stealth was broken the moment an attack was made.
But if there was an advantage, it was three-tier stealth comparable to B-rank despite being C-rank.
With this, even Shaman Sage Ruri wouldn’t be able to instantly catch onto Ted’s movements.
‘From now on, every bullet I fire will be one that overturns the board.’
Ted grinned.
Which side wins or loses was important too.
Because Ted dearly wanted to smash Pateuk, which blocked his path forward.
But more important than that was how quickly the siege warfare ended.
For Ted, this situation was precisely the best outcome he had hoped for.
A true head-on total war!
‘First. The four high-levels who followed Tenichi.’
Ted observed the four men and women who had entered the Great Plains.
One tanker, one woman who looked like a shaman, one woman in priest’s robes… and… a musketeer?
Looking closely, one of their faces was familiar.
‘Isn’t that the guy called Moonlight Hunter Roan who came looking for me last time?’
The first target was, of course, the long-range dealer.
Ted moved his muzzle toward him.
Soon, strength entered the finger resting on the trigger.