The Ultimate Evolution

A frame that was more than two metres tall. Solid muscles. Shiny, rough skin. Blood vessels which coursed through the surface of the body like snakes. Thick black mane that drifted in the wind. An odour that was unbearable to the human nose. And last but not least, a pale white pig head full of swelling warts. That was the Orc commander, Gothmog!

He raised the axe in his hand high. Suddenly, the axe glowed with an intense red light. The red light burst outwards like a shockwave, enclosing all the Orcs at least four or five square kilometers around.

All the Orcs within the red light roared simultaneously from the depths of their throats, then raised their weapons as well! Their eyes that were filled with greed and excitement seemed red enough to shed blood!

This abnormally powerful ‘Bloodlust’ spell of Gothmog’s was no inferior to the spells cast by a White Wizard like Gandalf in terms of both coverage and intensity. This was one of the reasons why he was able to establish himself as the commander-in-chief of the Orc army.

The next second, the axe in Gothmog’s hand hacked down violently. The back of the axe struck a bolt made of hard chestnut wood below, sending the bolt flying. Four black ropes as thick as a baby’s arm snapped loudly, then whipped forward!

These ropes were made with leather, hair, the tendons of giant beasts and the refined fat of underground creatures. When they were tightened, they could store a great amount of potential energy, which were then converted into kinetic energy for the throwing arm of the trebuchet when they were loosened. The throwing arm rotated upward in an arc, flinging the giant boulder it carried!

As if that was some sort of a signal, all 114 trebuchets surrounding Minas Tirith started launching giant boulders one after another! For a moment, even the sun was clouded by the large amount of falling giant stones, making the sky turn dark!

Minas Tirith had not experienced a war for nearly a hundred years, so peace had left a deep impression on this city built on the mountains, of which the most obvious proof were the exquisite carved railings surrounding the mountainside which were as beautiful as gardens.

These railings were filled with the romantic sentiment of the Gondorians. Under the sun, each railing made clever use of the light and shadows to produce a rich visual effect. Unlike other enclosed constructions, the sunlight eliminated the dullness of the enclosed walls. Decorative techniques such as circular engravure, high relief and shallow relief created a unique decorative art.

Their only drawback was that they were very fragile.

At least 87 tons of stones were thrown during the first round of the Orcs’ trebuchet bombardment. These stones struck the city walls of Minas Tirith at a speed of more than 500 m/s, higher even than the speed of thunder.

The decorative railings collapsed like skin being shed. Years of careful sculpting by thousands of skilled craftsmen turned to waste in an instant, revealing the ugly but solid walls built for wartime inside, as well as the arrow slits and the guard passages within the walls.

The gorgeous Minas Tirith had finally put on her hideous combat armour…

Amidst a long, shrill blow of the horn, nearly 40 siege towers made their appearances. The siege towers that slowly moved towards the city walls were taller even than the trebuchets.

The main frame of the siege tower was built from iron birchwood which grew only in the extremely cold climate in the north. The innermost layer was made of animal skin, sticky mud, and branches. The Orc shamans would then use their magical powers to transmute the mud into rock. After that, the whole process of laying animal skin, mud, and casting spell would be repeated again and again. Therefore, the siege towers that were slowly approaching the city did not look like man-made objects at all, but instead like indestructible giant rocks!

Of course, these things could only be pushed by the Trolls. Behind the full body armour of every Troll was a big, fat body that contained astonishing strength!

The height of the siege towers was exactly the same as the height of the Minas Tirith city walls. They were loaded with the most elite Uruk-hai warriors. As soon as they got close, the warriors would jump onto the walls. Ordinary humans could hardly resist their assault. It would be a massacre, a brutal massacre.

This was how the Orcs fought – simple, efficient and savage.

When there was a great disparity in might, the simplest tactic was often the best tactic. A direct assault was the best choice!

***

No contestant would join in on the first wave of the assault.

All glory to the vanguards, but the casualty rate was higher than 70%.

Now that the war had progressed to the current stage, the only thing that the contestants of Noah Realm C could do was wait.

After all the past relationships were wiped, few contestants were able to speak directly to Gothmog. Among those who could was someone who had a keepsake to prove his identity as a disciple of Saruman. Another one was Sheyan. Even the Ringwraiths and the powerful Orc commander could not resist the terrifying allure of Legend Level +3.

But being able to speak with Gothmog did not mean that Sheyan could influence Gothmog’s decision. Take the situation right now for example. The contestants inside Minas Tirith were strangely quiet. Sheyan knew that there must be a trap, but he did not know where the trap was!

Sheyan’s brain was working non-stop.

“What is the most important thing in this siege? It’s the siege weapons. That’s right. Without the siege weapons, no matter how sharp the Orcs’ swords and axes are, they won’t be able to cross the unbelievably thick walls to hurt the enemies. The enemies must realise this as well!! In that case, what method will they use to deal with these siege weapons? These things have their own HP and defence; they’re not made of paper!”

“Brother! Brother!” Sanzi suddenly came to him and whispered, “Kulutego told me he sensed a large amount of earth element converging abnormally inside the city!”

Sheyan suddenly drew in a sharp breath of air. “Could it be…?!!”

***

Meanwhile, inside the city of Minas Tirith.

Almost all the leaders among the contestants were gathered in a dungeon.

They looked nervous, but with a hint of anticipation.

In front of them, the war was being displayed in real-time.

“Closer! Closer! Almost there. Based on the simulations and calculations we performed before, we’ll give the enemy the heaviest blow if we strike in exactly 17 seconds!” said a gentle-looking man. His tone was calm, but his shaking hands completely betrayed his real emotion.

Knight was also present. Not only that, he was sitting among the group which seemed to be in command. He turned towards a woman wearing a mage’s robe the colour of earth and asked, “How are things going on your side, Onyxia?”

“We’ve completed all three large-scale magic formations, and we even have an unexpected piece of good news. Gandalf came over to instruct us during the process, so the active duration of the magic formations has been prolonged by 23%.”

Knight lifted a goblet and gently sipped the wine inside. His right hand swiped across the air, and a vivid image appeared out of nowhere. The image was depicting a vertical cross section of Minas Tirith, as if projected from a computer! All kinds of data such as contour lines and density lines could be seen on the image!

“Science is so amazing,” remarked Knight softly.

The moment he knew that the venue of the battle would be the city of Minas Tirith, Knight immediately put the advantage of a large party to good use. They started discussing various ways to defend the city. One of them requested for comprehensive data on Minas Tirith to perform a thorough analysis.

His idea was to redirect the flow of the Anduin river to wash away the horrifying amount of enemies outside the city. His proposal met with a lot of support in the beginning.

Through the powerful contacts and influence the Stockholm Party had in the real world, they managed to simulate the layered topographic map of Minas Tirith and its surrounding areas with supercomputers using information from the Lord of the Rings.

After multiple rounds of research and discussions, they found that attacking with water was rather impractical.

At that time, a contestant who had studied geology stated that, to attack the city of Minas Tirith, the enemy must attack from the intersection between the Pelennor Fields and Mount Mindolluin.

A mountain range was often formed when two major tectonic plates pushed against each other. There was no place to release the pressure and the edges of the plates could not go down, so they were lifted upwards. This point alone had already satisfied the basic conditions to induce a natural disaster.

Then, it was found through computer simulations that the structural deformations in the Minas Tirith area were characterised by thrust and dextral shear. After repeated analysis, they confirmed that the feasibility of creating a controllable earthquake under Minas Tirith was very high, because although the platonic condition there was stable, the stability was built upon several key spots. If these key spots were destroyed one by one, the probability of success was quite high.

It all sounded very complicated, but the principle behind it was actually very simple. Imagine there is a vase on a table in front of you. If you want the vase to fall towards you, you just need to cut off the two table legs near you. If you want the vase to fall to the opposite side, you need to cut off the two table legs further away from you.

It was just an extension of such a simple principle.

Furthermore, Minas Tirith was built on Mount Mindolluin, the easternmost peak of the White Mountains. The rocks of this mountain were known for its hardness. Therefore, although the chances of accidentally causing a landslide did exist, they were very slim.

After thousands of simulations, they finally came up with the optimal plan, which was to combine gunpowder with magic. First, they would detonate a large number of explosives in a certain area, then use magic spells to induce a small earthquake. The energy released by the earthquake would extend along the area shattered by the previous explosion!

The advantage of this method was that it would combine the power of both explosives and magic, and greatly reduce the demand for earth mages. At the same time, it would reduce the elemental activity when the mages jointly cast the spells by more than half, and thus lower the risk of being detected by the enemy in advance.

In the dark and humid dungeon, Knight suddenly raised his crystal goblet towards the outside of the city and said with a smile, “Good luck, gentlemen.”

And with that, “Operation Natural Disaster” officially begun!!

***

On the heated and bloody battlefield, the powerful trebuchets were pouring their stones at the city in a frenzy, and the siege towers were already within dozens of meters of the city walls!!

A low, deafening boom suddenly came from the ground to the west of the vast Pelennor Fields, three or four kilometers away from the battlefield. Close to ten air vents appeared on the ground near the place where the noise came from, spraying yellow columns of smoke and sand into the sky more than five metres high!

Next, another round of terrifying noise came from the ground. The noise was hard to describe, but everyone on the battlefield could hardly keep their balance afterwards. A fissure appeared at the spot where the initial explosion took place and rapidly extended towards the middle of the battlefield!!

At first, the fissure was less than half a metre wide, but it quickly enlarged as the land tremored, finally widening to dozens of metres!! It stretched forward in a curve with a slow, majestic and unstoppable pace, reaching across the battlefield below Minas Tirith. Faced against such a terrible natural disaster, the morale of the Orc army fell to the lowest point in no time at all. All the Orcs fled holding their heads. Unfortunately, but the trebuchets could not do the same. A small portion of the trebuchets disappeared down the deep, seemingly-bottomless fissure.

It was just a small earthquake, but the effects were shocking!

The city of Minas Tirith was now protected by this seemingly-bottomless abyss that was more than 20 metres wide and over six kilometres long. Anyone who wished to attack Minas Tirith from the ground would now have to make a detour of nearly five or six kilometres to the left or right!

The unfathomably deep fissure was like a grave scar on Pelennor Fields!

What’s more awkward was that the fissure had cut across the plain about one or two hundred metres away from Minas Tirith, which means that the 20 or so siege towers that had gotten close to the city walls were now cut off from the Orc army! To retrieve them, the Orc army either had to detour past the abyss-like fissure, or to somehow leap across!

After going through a phase of shock and disbelief, the morale of the defending side soared. A dazzling light suddenly shone from the tall, simplistic White Tower. This was actually just a simple trick which required only 20 or so mage-type contestants to cast the beginner arcane spell ‘Illuminate’. Under normal circumstances, the contestants of Noah Realm C would just scoff at such a flashy but useless trick, but on this unique occasion, it instantly raised the morale of the defending side to the highest level!

The word “miracle” spread throughout Minas Tirith. Hundreds of trebuchets inside the fortress city flung their stones frantically towards the siege towers that could no longer retreat. A large number of contestants mixed with a squadron of more than 500 heavy cavalry poured out of the gate. All of them seemed to be carrying something with them. Their targets were the Trolls responsible for pushing the giant siege towers. This was a great opportunity to kick the enemy while they were down!

Faced with such a bizarre situation, the Orc commander Gothmog was at a loss. However, he was indeed a capable leader appointed by Sauron himself, as he soon recovered from the shock. He climbed onto his hyena mount and ran around to boost the morale of the troops!

Under his orders, the Orc army on the plain soon divided themselves into two groups. One of the groups moved to the left while the other to the right, trying to bypass the horrible abyss of death to engage the enemy, or rather, to save their comrades. If one were to look down from the sky, the Orc army would look like a giant black crab that was extending its two pincers forward from the left and right to grab the enemies under the city.

But Minas Tirith had long noticed Gothmog’s intention thanks to their superiority in altitude. The cavalry and contestants that left the city successfully retreated before the Orc reinforcements arrived; there was not even one small skirmish. When they retreated, they threw the things they brought when they left the city onto the ground.

Those things were water bags. Hundreds of bags of water splashed onto the ground, drenching it wet. There was not enough water to cause a flood, of course, but earth was now soft and wet. After all, the Pelennor Fields was a plain with abundant water and grass in the first place!

The earth mages who created the earthquake just now gathered on the first layer of Minas Tirith and started to cast a spell with the help of magic formations. The spell they cast was not something powerful; it was ‘Quagmire’, another low-level spell like ‘Iluminate’.

The reason this spell was a low-level spell was because it was very restricted by the environment. It could not be used in the desert, nor could it be used on water. And the drier a place was, the less effective the spell.

The spell would create a large muddy area half a metre to a metre deep. The spell was originally created to deal with cavalry charges, but right now, because of the spell, the Orc army had to face the awkward situation of trudging several kilometres in the mud to reach their compatriots. Of course, the elite Orcs in the siege towers also had to trudge through the mud when they ran away.

And they were all within the shooting range of the Minas Tirith defenders!! With their mobility restricted by the mud, they became shooting targets that could not fight back!