Wandering Storm

Waking up in the morning, the first thought that Damian had was ‘Isn’t my recruitment actually free-labouring? What can a brown robe mage do in the raid anyway… Also I forgot to ask about sir Cain’s staff, it looked pretty.’

Just like the day before, he had breakfast and went to the tower. Unlike yesterday, all of the recruits went inside their departments instead of waiting outside. Arriving his building, Damian saw a new character, she was a young lady, with short tomboy electric blue hair, and her pointy ears suggested that she was an elf, or at least related to them. From her purple robe with lightning patterns, Damian guessed that she was the Lightning Fairy, Madame Elveth Hysta.

She took over Sir Cain’s role as the mentor of the senior group of mages, while the latter was designated to taking care of other artifacts.

Coming to his 3-person group, Damian greeted them and started working. He asked the man in yellow robe, who appeared to be his mid 30s “Uhh, I know I’m asking a lot, but please excuse my lack of knowledge, I will try my best to learn about the general information as soon as possible. But for now, may I ask about Sir Cain?”

The yellow robe man gave him an incredulous look and signed, but decided to answer his question anyway since it was no big deal “What about him?”

“Well, when I arrived here, I met him at the gate. He was holding a staff and used it to assess my rune stone. But I didn’t see it yesterday or even today. May you know what happen?”

The yellow robed’s eyes widened “What?? Sir Cain himself came to check your rune stone with a Woogie staff??”

“A Woogie staff?” Damian puzzled, also mused by the funny name of the staff.

“You really don’t know anything, do you? Woogie staff is a high-grade artifact which wields the best analyzing spells. Only Indigo robed and above can use it. What kind of rune stone did you bring to the city for Sir Cain to use the staff to check it…?”

“Well, it was quite a big cyan blue one. I sold it to a shop called Astaris or something. Oh and they said it wasn’t that special really. So…uhh, thanks for answering my question.”

“A big cyan stone…” both members of his group softly said.

Then they got back to work. Everything went well and smoothly. The group gradually got bigger as more and more people were recruited. At the end of the 7th day of recruiting, the mage department itself had its number of member rise to 147. The warriors had the most members, 686 in total, along with 423 assassins and 339 archers. Together, they formed a medium-size army of 1595 recruits

‘So mages in this world is also rare like the others huh?’ Damian thought. ’No wait, these mages were recruited because of their control over lightning. Hmmm.”

And so, more than 2 months swiftly but also seemingly slowly went by. The day of the raid was now imminent. The atmosphere of Derenal became more and more busy but also gloomy. Most of the merchants had left after selling their goods, leaving more spaces for the military and other forces to work and build.

10 days before the fateful event, Lord Hidain had arrived and brought along his force of paladins and priests, but no grand cardinals were there. His force contained 300 high-tier paladins, who were all covered in golden religious armors and wielded either sabers of axes. The priests, of course, wore priest clothes, and there were only 24 of them. Despite their small number, they were a crucial part of the operation as divine power is known for its potent healing and augmenting spells.

Lord Hidain Pheatus, the Feathered Blade, was an imposing figure. He was a really huge and buffy man, he looked old but there was no wrinkles on his face. His hair was ivory white and long, making him look like a fierce lion king. He wore a huge golden armor, which was far bigger than the other paladins’, there were intricate lines etched across the surface, giving off a holy vibe. Despite that, he moved swiftly as if there was no huge chunk of gold on his body at all. That made Damian wondered if the leader of the paladins either very strong or the armor was lightened with magic.

On his back, was a huge great-sword with uncannily clean surface, it too was made of gold and other sturdy alloys. Golden runes were glowing subtly in along the blade of the sword, emanating a divine aura. The sword’s size fitted Sir Hidain perfectly.

The church’s force had settled in their own accommodation, Lord Hidain immediately went to the main building where the commanders were staying.

Now, the raid force is completed. More than 300 church members, almost 1600 newly recruited freelancers, 2000 official knights and mages of the Empire and countless weapons and artifacts. It was truly a powerful force, an army even.

The day drew closer and closer. A week before Zergish arrival, all of the defense had been fully stationed, the whole army was ready and countless weapons were loaded. From the top of the highest tower, which situated in the middle of the city, a large dome of force-field covered the entire city. The outer wall of the city was even further reinforced with more powerful magic arrays. All is set.

On the 3rd day before the raid, beasts and monsters arrived, crazily fleeing away from a raging storm from afar. Although some ignored the city and went around, most of the horde mindlessly rammed into the outer walls, frantically trying to find their escape.

Immediately, all kinds of spells circles on the ground were triggered. Flames bloomed and formed columns of scorching fire, electricity and lightning danced around, fried the unfortunates to crisp, earth spikes shot from the ground piercing them,… But the horde seemed to be endless.

Some creatures who could fly and boasted powerful magical resistance bypassed the outer wall and flew towards the city, only to be welcomed by a rain of arrows which were enhanced by both magic and divine spells.

The 2nd day were even more devastating. Huge, stronger beasts started to show up, chimeras with eagle heads and dragon wings along with spiky tails, giant blood-red centipedes with glowing rubies on their bodies which could shoot deadly beams, and even some colossal hydras came to this grand ghastly stampede.

And yet, the defense held strong, and there were still zero injuries. Even the melee combat forces hadn’t been deployed. The raid forced had predicted this and made ample preparations to deal with the hordes of monster, who were fleeing away from the Wandering Storm.

And on the day of the raid, a loud, world-shaking roar could be heard from afar. Together with the raging storm on the sky shooting thick bolts of lightning down endlessly. A couple of hours late, a milk white giant figure which connected the earth and the sky with its majestic milky white body appeared on the horizon.

Zergish, the Wandering Storm, who had awaken from its millenniums-long slumber, had arrived.

“Huh, it looks like a giant glorified unicorn.” Damian commented in amusement.