Is this really a Game?!

The army continued their march as all of their troops were shielded by the defensive array, soon arrows start raining down on them, they simply bounced off the defensive array while some of them exploded upon impact, some exploded because the soldiers had skills that allowed them to do that, while others because they were a special kind of explosive arrow that the kingdom produced.

It did little to the defensive array however as the army simply continued their march, it seemed that they had complete confidence in the power of the defensive array and as such there was no reason for them to be overly cautious. The other items they had were also put to use, there were multiple cocoon-like devices amongst the army and with a simple infusion of mana they opened up as hundreds of arrows were launched from them.

Many of the arrows either missed or hit the walls of the different watchtowers and the fortification but some managed to hit some of the soldiers. Still, little damage was done and they were mostly used simply to force the soldiers into hiding for a period of time. The tactic worked well as the constant barrage of arrows from the defensive forces had stopped, even though the soldiers were willing to put their life on the line in order to protect their kingdom, it was useless for them to try and attack the enemy now as they would probably get skewered by the arrows before managed to launch even one of their own.

Dain quickly took a large bow that was leaning against the wall. That was the weapon he used, slowly he pulled the bow before releasing the 1-meter long arrow that was notched on it, the arrow zooms toward the army in an instant and hits the defensive array, causing it to ripple a bit. Even though it seemed useless, this was the first time the array had actually produced such a reaction, quickly he notched another arrow and got ready to continue his attacks.

As the second arrow neared the defensive array it was knocked away, one of the two men that were together with the leader had acted. He stood right at the edge of the defensive array and managed to hit the powerful arrow with his giant, spiked metal bat. Even though he was stronger compared to Dain the collision still made his arms hurt a bit as such an arrow isn’t something normally used during battle. Not only did it take a long time to notch the arrow and pull the bowstring, but the power one needed in order to do so had to be adequate as well.

Lieara took her halberd and tried jumping off the wall before being stopped by Reign and Ilas, the two quickly grabbed each of her hands and stopped her from doing such a reckless act. 𝚍ｎ𝚘ｖ𝚕.𝚝

“What the, unhand me!”

“No can do, you’re a valuable combatant here and I can’t allow you to simply go and die for nothing,” Ilas spoke as Reign simply nodded his head, before Lieara could retort to his words, Raigon opened his mouth.

“Lieara, now is not the time to be doing such things, Dain, let’s use the third stratagem for this.”

“The third, I understand.” Dain bowed to Raigon as he took a couple of soldiers and instructed them on what to do, the soldiers quickly saluted him and the others before running down the stairs in haste.

“Although I have to admit that this was unexpected, much more will be needed in order to take us down.” Raigon flashed a quick smile at Reign who was able to spot the dangerous glint in his eyes, it seemed that Raigon was going to act seriously from now on.

“The defensive array is definitely a powerful one, but it’s not like it doesn’t have its weakness, the mana expenditure is definitely not something to scoff at, you can clearly see that a group of people is right next to the carriage and they are rotating every couple of seconds in order to keep the array functioning.”

“We simply need to continue dealing damage to it, the more damage we deal the more mana they are forced to use, their goal is probably to simply get close enough to the wall before the array is destroyed,” Raigon says before looking at the last device that the attackers were pulling with them, it was in the shape of a cube and it was about 3 meters in height and width.

“That is the only thing I am worried about, the kingdom of Irtil was the one that gave them the array, while the kingdom of Asuria was the one that gave them the cocoon-shaped device, they are the ones that are famous for their powerful mechanisms and gadgets, after all, judging by the look it seems that the last device is probably something that was given by them as well, the other two kingdoms were probably the ones that used the most resources for the summoning as they didn’t have anything like this to give.”

“So, do you want me to test them?” Reign suddenly asked.

“Huh?”

“Well, I’m quite confident that I can pierce through the array and fight them for a bit before retreating, so, what do you say, you want me to try and get close to that cube-shaped device they have?”

Raigon stared at Reign for a while before shaking his head.

“No, that won’t be necessary, we still don’t know if there are any other surprises, after all, you are the only one that can fight their leader and I don’t want to risk getting you injured so early in the fight, I can see that you are confident in your skills, but do remember that each of the four kingdoms has first evolution combatants, and they of course also have ways of hurting other first evolution combatants, if they, for some reason had given something like that to this army then this is going to become really dangerous and I won’t be able to help anybody that is too far away.”

Reign simply nodded before continuing to look at the army. He wondered what Raigon meant by ways of hurting first evolution combatants, did he mean items that could only be used once, for them to have such power they would need to be at least rank A, perhaps the kingdoms had a couple of them. Beast for example had an item that could be used once a day, his red arrow, there were also items that could only be used once before getting destroyed, the power of such items would definitely be great if they were of a high rank.

Maybe it was a completely different thing as well, the kingdoms could have created weapons that could hurt powerful warriors without the help of the system as well.

‘A world that had magic before the system even arrived, as expected, it is many times more powerful and dangerous compared to Earth.’ Reign had only interacted with the bottom of the food chain when it came to this world, all of the kingdoms here could be said to be amongst the weakest ones, and still, their power was great.

He wondered just how powerful the top empires in this world were; they even had people that went through the fourth evolution and stories of even more powerful ones existed as well. Just how much power would they possess?

Reign had previously even met gods and interacted with Transcendents, but none of them had even used a sliver of their true strength and as such he was simply unable to discern how powerful they truly were.

As the enemy approached, more and more traps were triggered as the defensive array started flickering a bit, one could even spot a couple of the soldiers that were busy using mana to keep the array functioning and had passed out from the exhaustion. Of course, their plan so far had worked brilliantly as they were a mere 20 meters from the wall.

Suddenly one could hear a rumbling sound coming from the wall, under the watchful gaze of the enemy army some parts of the wall opened up before multiple concentrated blasts of mana were fired their way. To Reign, it looked like multiple laser beams had suddenly pierced through the defensive array, a couple of soldiers were unlucky enough to get hit by the laser and couldn’t even utter a word before being cut down.

There were now multiple holes at the front of the defensive array, Reign could see that the holes however were slowly getting healed, but before they could get closed multiple soldiers suddenly peeked out from the wall and threw metal balls on top of the array, some of them hit the array while other managed to get in through the holes.

Immediately after hitting the ground, the metal balls exploded and tens of soldiers were killed.