Chapter 388: A Breach Bought in Aether

"Should we have kept the line away from the sea?" Ronan murmured.

It was too late to reconsider.

The Black Banner’s leaders had chosen this position carefully. Hundreds of kilometers of flat ground gave them room to arrange their Domains. The sea protected the west and south, a river covered the east, and an abyss lay to the north.

The coast also let their Defense Towers fire on an approaching fleet before its troops could land.

They had considered all of that. They had not considered a movable Five Elements Temple, or a Water spell powerful enough to turn the sea against them.

The second tsunami reached the shore.

Ronan thrust again. The towers fired with him, tearing into the crest before the remaining water crashed down upon the shields.

Then came a third wave.

A fourth. A fifth.

After seven Tidewraths, the Lords on the front line began to panic.

"Lord Vexley, my shield can’t take much more!"

"I’m already feeding it mid-grade crystals! It still drains faster than it recovers!"

"More than half my tower ammunition is gone!"

Aether could replenish a Domain’s shield, but the shield needed time to absorb it. The waves gave them almost none. Even the barriers being fed with mid-grade crystals had begun to flicker.

High-grade fuel, with its purer Energy, would help. Yet no power in the Homeworld could casually afford to burn it across an entire defensive line.

Ronan raised his voice.

"All Legendary fighters, take turns intercepting the waves! An attack of this strength must already be using high-grade fuel. Let’s see whose reserves last longer!"

Thousands of Legendary troops rose into the air.

"Divine Strike!"

"Devil Scythe!"

"Meteor Ray!"

"Beast King’s Roar!"

Even these powerful fighters had no wish to meet that vast weight of water with their bodies. They cast from a distance, throwing their strongest ranged skills into the approaching wave.

Each attack carried power comparable to an Epic Defense Tower. Thousands of them joined the towers already firing from the Domains.

This time, Tidewrath lost ninety percent of its strength before impact. The remaining force struck the Black Banner’s line, but the strain on the shields finally fell to a level the defenders could sustain.

Ronan let out a breath.

Cassian’s voice rolled across the sea.

"Black Banner Lords, save some of those crystals. Anyone who can’t pay a ransom later dies!"

He meant every word.

Wars on this scale devoured resources. The opening bombardment alone had already burned more than a hundred million Aether, apart from the ten billion spent moving the Temple. By the time the fighting ended, his expenditure could run into the hundreds of billions.

He intended to recover that money from the enemy.

The Black Banner Lords heard only an intolerable insult.

"Arrogant brat!" Ronan shouted. "If you have another trick, use it!"

Cassian gave a cold snort and said nothing more.

Ronan’s spirits rose.

"You see? He’s already run out of answers!"

Then he looked toward the horizon, and his smile vanished.

"How...?"

The next wave rose nearly a kilometer into the sky.

"How can it be stronger?"

Understanding struck him a moment later.

"He wasn’t using high-grade crystals before! He’s only started now!"

His shout became a roar.

"High-grade fuel into every shield! All ranged troops, fire everything you have! We must hold this wave!"

He drove his spear forward. Dozens of spear images, each a hundred meters long, shot toward the enormous wall of water.

The defenders had only just begun to relax. Now they scrambled to feed better crystals into their half-depleted shields, but the fuel could not repair the damage in an instant.

Some Lords saw what was coming. They abandoned their Domains and flew upward.

Every available attack struck the tsunami. Much of its power broke apart before reaching the line.

What remained was enough.

The front-row fortresses were only a little over a kilometer across. Their tallest Buildings barely exceeded two hundred meters. With their shields already weakened, they had nothing left that could withstand the water bearing down on them.

Barriers shattered.

The flood tore through walls, towers, and halls. Buildings came apart in the churning current and vanished beneath the foam.

"My Domain!"

The Lords who had taken flight screamed as they watched more than a year of work disappear. The resources they had invested, the Buildings they had raised, everything they had hoped to recover after this war—all of it was gone.

They were still the fortunate ones.

Lords who had reacted too slowly were torn apart with their Domains.

The wave swept more than a hundred kilometers of coast, destroying roughly a hundred Rank-XVIII fortresses and tens of thousands of Defense Towers. Its force diminished as it crossed the wreckage, but it still struck the second row hard enough to send the shields there flickering madly.

Cassian watched with satisfaction.

"High-grade fuel does make a difference. A little expensive, though."

"A little?" Nessa looked as though the crystals had come out of her own reserves. "The fuel for that one strike was worth at least a billion ordinary Aether!"

Ordinary, mid-grade, high-grade, premium—the usual market price rose roughly a hundredfold with each grade. The Energy stored in a crystal rose only tenfold. What buyers paid for was its purity, and the greater power it could draw from the same spell.

A Tidewrath that required ten million ordinary Aether could be fueled by a hundred thousand high-grade crystals. At current rates, those crystals were worth a billion ordinary Aether. Scarcity could push the price higher still.

Cassian had bought his reserves through the Exchange. As with supplying the Ghost fleet, purchasing, receiving, and arranging a batch of a hundred thousand high-grade crystals could take at least a full day’s work.

The stock was valuable and finite. He could not spend it on every wave. Better to keep most of his attacks cheap, then use the stronger fuel when the enemy was least ready for it.

"Boss," Lyra called, "that spearman has to be one of their War Marshals. Shall I kill him?"

"No!" Cassian answered at once.

He wanted the National Fortune attached to the veteran’s office. The Temple was a wild Building. Its kills were not credited to Cassian, even with his administrator authority.

Letting it kill Ronan would waste the prize he had come to collect.

"Keep using Tidewrath. Break the second row."

The bombardment continued.

Cassian settled into a pattern of nine lighter attacks followed by one heavy strike. At times, Lyra mixed in Cinderfall. Its area was smaller, its power more concentrated, and a single cast could erase one selected Domain.

The Black Banner Lords never knew which attack would come next. Just when they thought they could hold another wave, stronger fuel turned it into a disaster. Then fire descended where they had been watching for water.

Their army outnumbered Divine Nation’s ten to one. None of their commanders mistook numbers for equal strength. They dared not launch a counterattack and could only endure the punishment behind what remained of their line.

Half a day passed.

Cassian supplied premium crystals for another Tidewrath.

A wave more than a kilometer high rolled toward the shore and destroyed the tenth row of Domains.

"Ten thousand premium crystals," Darian said, pained despite his own wealth. "Ten billion ordinary Aether. Even you should have a limit to how much money you throw into the sea."

The others were staring at Cassian too. Even Lyra looked curious.

Had he found a premium-grade Aether mine?

Crystals of that grade were subject to the same import restrictions as Legendary items. They could not simply be brought from the Homeworld into the newcomer sector. A supply this large naturally made his friends wonder.

Cassian smiled at the ruined coast.

"That should do for this section."

He pointed toward the shattered fortresses.

"They concentrated their Defense Towers in the outer ten rows. Destroying those rows gives our army room to land and deploy. It also saves lives. That’s worth spending a little more."

Darian looked at the hundred-kilometer breach, eager now.

"Then can we attack?"