Golden Experience

Chapter 80: “Caught in a Burning Barley Field”

Blanc’s group kept approaching the city, but there were no other major movements on either side. The group of red skeletons should have been in plain sight from the city by now, but both sides must have determined that as long as they didn’t meet then no fighting would break out. However, Blanc’s group had more than just skeletons.

“Ah, we’re close enough. [Mist], [Dark Curtain].”

Without a sound, mist and darkness exploded out of Blanc. Rather than true “darkness,” though, it was more like dimming the lights. Since the sun was still rising, when it expanded together with the mist, the [Dark Curtain] severely hindered visibility.

“Isn’t this totally amazing? If I use it at night, I bet no one would be able to see any…thing, but actually, there’s no point in making things dimmer at night…”

“It’s good that you noticed that on your own.”

At least it was an effective skill for right now. The human defenders had started moving about frantically as soon as the mist suddenly appeared.

“But you’re too late! [Hellflame]!”

Searing flames instantly billowed out, as though the mist itself had caught on fire, and tongues of fire ignited the barley fields.

“That’s so cool! It’s like the mist itself caught on fire!”

However, the mist just improved the effects of magic, it didn’t actually ignite on fire. That’s why only the area she targeted, the fields, burned up, while the fire didn’t touch the spartoi who were also within the mist.

When they saw the field going up in flames, the city’s defenders ran about in a panic. The man she thought was the commander yelled something, and she saw some of the other guards gather around him.

“Ahaha! You know, I’m so happy everything went exactly as planned!”

“That’s because things rarely go as planned.”

“All right! Chaaarge!!!”

All of the spartoi ran toward the city at Blanc’s command. On the other hand, the human guards were in complete disarray. Some were heading to extinguish the burning fields, some shrank back at the incoming spartoi, and some were completely failing to rally everyone to focus on the same objective. However, none of that made any difference to the spartoi. They simply charged at the city as fast as they could.

“From here, I think I can just barely reach the edge of the city with one of my spells. I shall provide support,” Azalea said as crystals of ice gathered before her chest to form an arrow. She was casting [Ice Bullet]. It launched forward in a straight line, between all the spartoi, to stab into the ground right at the frontmost guards’ feet.

“It came up short.”

Azalea sighed. “That was on purpose. It was a ranging shot.”

After seeing that, Carmine and Magenta advanced a number of steps toward the city, then fired their own [Ice Bullets]. This time, they were bullseyes, and two guards fell to the dirt. Seeing the dead bodies in their midsts, the group’s panic reached its apex, and some of them began to flee into the city.

This area was far from monster territory, so the only threats the city ever got around here were wild animals or small monsters that weren’t very dangerous. These people may have been part of the city guard, but they had probably never experienced a situation where their lives were on the line before. While the city was right on the highway, it never got attacked by bandits. Even presuming there was anything worth stealing, this region wasn’t friendly enough for thieves to steal something then survive on their own outside of the city. In exchange for how poor it was, it gained peace. That ended last night, though.

Even though those people escaped into the city, all they changed was the order of death; they all would still be dying today. The mormos let them go and focused on sniping the guards in the front lines who hadn’t lost their will to fight. Meanwhile, the spartoi finally reached the guard squad. Since they expected a melee to break out, the mormos stopped their sniping.

“Master, how are the fields looking?”

“Lookin’ good. The barley fields have now become burned fields! I’m sure they’ll have a huge harvest of ashes next year, even without anyone to plant seeds!”

“Slash-and-burn fields are indeed a type of shifting cultivation, unsuitable for farming that relies on rich soil coming from being near a river.”

“Is that also from one of the count’s books?”

“Yes.”

Whenever Blanc didn’t know about something, she would just ask Magenta, since it felt like she would always get an answer to anything she wanted to know.

The charging spartoi mercilessly cut down the guards. Most of them wore leather armor or padded clothing, and only the commander-looking guy from before had metal armor. Against the spartoi’s claws and fangs, however, they may as well have been naked. Speaking of the commander, he had been trying to fall back to the rear, but a bunch of guards were trying to move toward the burning barley fields, so he was having a hard time of it. Which meant that no one was giving orders at the moment.

“Although we’re just too strong for them to make up the difference with leadership and strategy.”

“Yeah… I’m happy that things are going well for once, but doesn’t this feel like we’re still just winning by force? The spartoi haven’t taken any damage at all from the guards even though they’re weak from the sunlight.”

“Rather than things going as planned, the humans are just far too weak. While our forces are indeed weakened while it is not night, they are still more capable than the average human,” Carmine answered.

“Hmmm… All right, so next time, what if the spartoi ran in first, then if things look bad I use [Mist] and stuff to support them? If things still look bad after that, then everyone starts shooting magic too.”

“I do not really recommend staggering our offense in that manner…”

“If you would like to try fighting in that manner, first have the spartoi charge, then, whether or not it succeeds, they will need to recover from the attack, so we follow up with spells to completely break down their posture. Does this plan sound better?”

“The tactic that Master suggested was to merely split our offense into turns, but what Azalea said has much more strategic value as a saturation attack.”

“Oh, I see now… So wait. Aren’t you guys like my kids? You’re super duper smart, though. Statswise, we have the same INT though… or more like if we only look at INT, mine should be higher.”

Blanc responded in kind of a dejected way, but the mormos noses twitched in delight. She wasn’t sure which part exactly had made them so happy.

“Eh, anyway, it’s good that things are going well here. Once things are under control, we’ll do the same thing we did in the last— Well, if we do that, the zombies will just die right away. We’ll first wait until it gets dark, zombify everyone with [Necromancy], then toss them back into their houses.”

Not sure why links are causing weird spacing issues, so I’ll move them down here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn