Chapter 314: The Importance Of Knowledge

They would destroy the magical ritual sigil once they were finished studying it, just in case the Frost Giants could use it to come straight back to Marimgar once they realized what had happened.

That would be bad all around, the heroes were exhausted, and they had sent the flying support away.

Not that anyone thought the Giants could breach the city with its artillery active.

But this was a unique opportunity for the mages of Marimgar to study a spell that was not from the System’s Skill Tree. They might be able to learn something new this way, and Kalli’s store didn’t sell magical tomes or spell books.

Well, it did sell spell books, but blank ones, for the mages to write in.

It even sold magical ink. Unfortunately, they didn’t have anyone who knew how to use it.

Around the Frost Giant City, a massive storm was brewing, which caused the Assault Team to beat a hasty retreat into the mountains, following the river to a known escape route that would bring them out of sight of the city in the shortest possible time.

They didn’t bother to target the farms outside the city, the mountain goats the Giants raised hadn’t done anything to them, and they didn’t have the space to stop and load them up for food.

Waste not, want not.

The Assault Team escaped just as the Frost Giants arrived home, ready to battle, only to find that their entire city had been shattered, with nearly every building in ruins, and hundreds of dead in the street, plus thousands of wounded.

To say that they were enraged was far too mild of a term for the emotion that they were experiencing.

The humans had tricked them.

THE HUMANS.

They did not understand the speed of Marimgar’s vehicles, and assumed that an attacking force had been sent out days or even a week ago, looking for the Frost Giants even as the Frost Giants were hunting for Marimgar.

And they had waited for the assault on the human city to begin before attacking, so that the defenders could not call on reinforcements.

Cruel and cowardly.

The only ones left in the city were the ones unworthy of fighting. The children, the nursemaids, the crippled and those branded as slaves for cowardice. Still, they had fought back against the humans, and though they were crippled, many of the ones left behind were still powerful.

Especially the nursemaids, who were chosen from among the mightiest female warriors to be worthy of training the next generation.

Which only made the losses that much worse. They had lost many of their most qualified teachers and childcare experts at a moment when they needed a whole new generation of powerful children even more desperately than ever.

However, soon there would be replacements.

For their merits in battle, new nursemaids would be named from among the female Commanders, and new City Elders would be named from among the men to replace the ones lost here today.

It was the juvenile warriors, the ones nearly ready for war but not quite trained, that were the biggest loss.

With the growth speed of the Frost Giants, many of the most valiant defenders lost here today were mere months from full adulthood. Their loss was a direct hit to the recovery of the tribe.

Sanchez led the group back through the mountains, following the same path they had arrived upon, for two hours before he stopped along the shoreline for a break.

"Good work everyone. We dealt a lot of damage to the city, and while we were firing blind for much of the battle, I could see that we did manage to either exhaust or eliminate many of their mages.

That should keep them home for a while, and teach them not to attack Marimgar. Seeing that we can hit them so soon after they hit us aught to teach them to mind their business and to pick on someone else."

Naturally, the Frost Giants had learned no such lesson, and didn’t understand that the humans had departed after the battle.

But the Frost Giants were not the only ones having a bad day.

In the frozen northern mountains, on the far side of the continent from the Frost Giants, the Mountain Giants had also staged an attack today. Only, they had picked an even worse target.

Troll King Larry was a formidable foe, and his army of Rock Trolls numbered nearly a hundred thousand, with countless smaller species under them. Unfortunately for the Mountain Giants, who had come prepared to fight Trolls, the Troll army was not alone.

They had made friends with a Naga Clan, whose powerful water magic had immediately doused all the magical fire that the Giants had brought to defeat the trolls.

It even suppressed most of the lingering fire damage from skills and weapons, allowing the Naga Shamans to heal the Trollish army in battle, from wounds that no Troll could heal themselves.

So, it had been a one sided crushing defeat, and for the unforgivable act of slaughtering the goats on the way to the city, Troll King Larry had mounted a full assault on the Mountain Giants.

Their city had fallen to the might of Larry and his army in under six hours, leaving the scout groups that couldn’t make it back on time the only Mountain Giants in existence. Their faction was essentially wiped out, and Larry happily claimed the city for the Trolls.

They had thoroughly enjoyed this set of trials so far, as the System kept giving them more goats and soup as rewards, and that had led to a population explosion among the various troll species.

Frankly, they needed more space anyhow.

So, they took what the Mountain Giants had built and made it their own. They even transferred some of their surviving goat farms to the new fields, while claiming the mountain goats and oxen the Giants had been raising.

It truly was a good day to be a troll.