Chương 99: B2 Chapter 41: Unexpected Enemies

Jamar Tostral, fourth scion of her house, shook off her momentary confusion and charged.

"Reserve squad, with me!" Her two elites were already engaging the lone royal guard, their speed, strength, and coordination forcing the Crown's lackey to defend. The 24 regular soldiers that were supposed to provide the edge of numbers, however, were mired in the strangest fight she had ever seen. At first, all she could see of this bizarre swarm was a carpet of shiny metal, accompanied by innumerable sounds of pieces of metal brushing up against each other.

Then an upward-slanted rain of tiny darts shot out from the swarm, sections of it focused on each of her soldiers. She blinked once again as she got a closer look at a few of the darts. Are those miniature javelins? And are they aiming specifically for everyone's faces? How? Dungeon monsters aren't supposed to be that smart! Many of the darts bounced off of armor, especially helmets, but an annoyingly large portion found eyeslits or other gaps, and many of Jamar's soldiers flinched.

Then details of the swarm itself became clearer, as both she and the swarm charged forward to close the gap, and she gaped and almost stumbled in bafflement. The dungeon's swarm looked like a collection of children's toys brought to life – the collection of a rich noble child who liked to play pretend military games with unrealistic armies composed entirely of fully-equipped identical knights.

Human-shaped miniature suits of steel plate armor, only a few inches tall, rode atop horse-shaped steel barding of the same scale, galloping forward at considerable speed. She wasn't sure whether there were actual creatures wearing the armor, or if the armor itself was animated. Everywhere she looked, there were more of the damn things; hundreds of them at least.

Jamar Tostral ran to the right end of her soldiers' line, where the swarm was about to start flanking them, and swept a double slash of her swords along the ground at the level of the toy knights' chests. Her swords cut through a dozen of them with ease, and she smiled at the sight of the creatures dissolving into vapor as they died. Interesting, they do have flesh inside the armor.

Then she jerked as if stung as she noticed 5 toy knights hanging from her swords like they were some kind of demented metal monkeys hanging from a pair of sharp-edged mobile tree branches. One of the knights was almost standing on her right-hand sword, and it took a step toward her hand while drawing its own tiny sword. She quickly shook her swords, then scraped them along each other when shaking proved insufficient to dislodge the last two toy knights. She frowned. My swords are enchanted for extreme sharpness.

Shaking them should have sliced even the steel gauntlets of those things to pieces. In fact, just grabbing on in the first place should have cost them fingers, or even whole hands. Unless… Their armor is enchanted too? A dungeon adding not just equipment, but enchanted equipment to its spawned monsters? What? She looked around and grimaced. Her elites were still pressing the royal guard hard, but most of the rest had turned into a farcical mockery of a battle.

An endless succession of tiny lances scraped or bounced off of armored boots, creating a hellish din, and the toy knights kept tossing their lances aside and proceeding to climb her soldiers' legs like they were tree trunks. The Tostral soldiers were reaping a toll on the toy knights, often killing multiple of the tiny creatures with the same attack, but the swarm kept coming. Then someone near the left flank released a wave of mana, and the dirt ground turned into a morass of sticky mud.

With a tremendous crash of many pieces of metal clanging together, a large section of the swarm stumbled and fell over. A few of her soldiers stumbled as well, but Jamar was pleased to see the toys that had already climbed above the muck getting winnowed rapidly, even if the fight still looked far too much like a slapstick comedy show. Jamar Tostral herself lightly stepped across the mud, unaffected as she cleared the area in front of her. She glimpsed a new movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced over.

A group of much larger toys, over a foot tall and sporting wings on their horses, dived from above at the soldier who had made the mud. They were shouting some kind of battle cry, too. Something about… jokes? And destroying humor? What? She shook her head and returned her focus to the ground at her own feet. She blinked. Wait, where did they all go? I haven't killed that many of them yet!

She looked to either side and saw that the swarm was very much still there, but had inexplicably cleared a path directly ahead of her. She looked along the cleared path and cocked her head. She absently noticed a wave of dungeon mana solidifying the mud back into dirt, paying it no attention in light of the mystery facing her. What kind of idiot fool of a noble spends the attention for active ambient mana absorption while in combat? More importantly… Jamar cleared her throat.

"Who the hell are you? And where is Carlos?" The young man facing her smirked at her – smirked! – and Jamar scowled. How dare he!? Is he even my age? His armor and sword may be decently made and enchanted, but I'm a Tostral, and he's just a noble too minor for me to even recognize! And seriously, he's using a shield on his off hand? Like a cowardly peasant? The man raised an eyebrow at her quizzically, then sniffed and turned his head.

"Jamar, incompetent failure and disgrace to the House of Tostral, you are unworthy of even hearing my name. As for my benefactors, they have sent me to deal with you in their stead. You are not worth even their attention, much less their time and effort." Jamar crossed her swords, tensed her legs, and shouted at him." How dare–" He interrupted her by slamming his right foot forward into the ground and adopting a ready stance, sword forward and shield held close.

"If you believe me wrong, then prove it. By defeating me." Jamar snorted contemptuously.

"Of course! You may be 6 levels higher than me, but unlike you and your pathetic shield, I'm not afraid of a little pain. Now witness the superiority of High House Tostral!" She lunged forward without warning, stabbing low with her left and high with her right, but the annoying teen smoothly parried her left sword with his own sword and blocked her right sword with his shield. She gawked at the sight of her sword's tip and edge skittering off of the shield without even leaving a mark.

Enchanted or not, my swords should have at least cut a scratch into that! Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. She almost didn't react in time when he followed up on his parry with a quick slash at her belly, but she managed to jerk her center backward just far enough to dodge. She quickly shuffled her feet back too and raised her swords crossed in front of her chest, trying to play off how graceless her dodge had been.

Jamar hid her surprise at seeing her opponent just standing there, watching her. He raised an eyebrow and smirked at her again.

"What happened to not being afraid of a little pain? You could have taken that hit on your armor." Jamar Tostral ground her teeth and forced out an answer." Armor is only a backup for when skill fails. My skills will not fail." The young man had the audacity to laugh at her and shook his head.

"Your teachers failed you, if that is what you believe. Armor is a tool, to be used in conjunction with skill, just as with any other tool." Jamar smiled.

"Oh really? Let's see how your armor fares against this!" She stepped forward and unleashed a flurry of feints and strikes. Much to her frustration, he didn't fall for any of the feints, and an infuriating portion of her attacks hit his shield to no effect. The repeated blocks did at least let her figure out how his shield was holding up so well. He's reinforcing it with his own mana, strengthening its durability on top of its defensive enchantments. She narrowed her eyes.

Well then, I guess I might have to actually exert myself a bit. She took a breath, disciplined her mind, and filled her body with mana. Everything seemed to slow down, except her own body, which moved faster than ever. She lashed out with several savage blows, targeting the man's shield arm and forcing his shield far to the side, then shifted faster than he could recover and adjust. Her right sword stabbed for his throat, and only his sword could move in time to bat it aside.

Then while his sword was occupied, and his shield was still too far to the wrong side, she slashed her left sword at a narrow gap between two plates on his shoulder. Her sword slipped underneath one plate, and the tip slid in to touch the flesh beneath. As she settled back into her stance, her left sword dripped blood. Jamar smiled in triumph as she pointedly watched the blood drip, but the young man just cocked his head and looked at her.

"Congratulations, you gave me a scratch. Do you really think that's going to mean anything?" Jamar shrugged.

"Maybe one scratch won't affect you much, but I can do it again. How will you fare with a dozen wounds, or two dozen?" The man chuckled.

"You misunderstand. I did not say that it won't mean much. I said that it won't mean anything. At all. It's already stopped bleeding. By the time you can scratch me another dozen times, it will be healed completely." Jamar blinked, and her jaw dropped open for a second.

"Wait, did you spend a soul structure on healing yourself? What a pointlessly extravagant waste! Items and spells can provide all the healing you'll ever need, and at worst a respawn heals everything." She smirked.

"Here, let me show you the power of devoting all soul structures to things that will actually help you win!" She amplified her speed again and focused all of her strength on thrusting faster than he could react and stronger than his armor could block. She aimed a sword at each of his shins. Annoyingly, despite her tremendous speed, he managed to shift to the side just enough to make her left sword glance off of his armor.

She adjusted her right sword well enough to still punch through and slice his left shin, but it didn't cut nearly as deep as she'd hoped; his shin bone was unreasonably tough, and the edge of her sword just scraped shallowly across the surface. He responded with a slash at her neck, and she had to duck hastily while she withdrew her swords. He still nicked the edge of her left ear. She glared at him, but he just stood ready for their next clash, seemingly unbothered by his new wound.

Jamar Tostral attacked, again and again, scoring more than a dozen wounds as their duel continued, but never anything truly serious. The unknown young noble couldn't match her speed, but he unfailingly made the correct parry, or dodge, or adjustment, to deflect her blows just far enough. On the few occasions she scored a solid hit, it never penetrated as far as it should have, and the only blood she ever saw was what came out at the moment of the injury.

Jamar breathed heavily, trickling blood from four slight cuts scattered across her body.

"How? Why can't I kill you?" The young man, faceless behind his armor, stood as calm and ready as ever.

"It seems to me, Jamar the failure, that the very soul structure you derided as pointless is, in fact, helping me win this fight. Will you concede defeat, or must I force it upon you?" Jamar's swords shook in front of her, her arms struggling to hold them in their proper positions. Why do I feel so weak and tired? I shouldn't be this exhausted so soon. She gripped her swords more tightly and glared at her opponent. Is he getting bigger somehow? No, no, he's still the same size as always. Isn't he?

She shook her head and exerted her mana for another attack. Her body seemed to respond to her will a bit sluggishly, but she pushed past it to strike with all of her speed and strength at the vexingly-durable man's heart. The tips of both of her swords blurred forward, faster than even he could react, and with more force than even his armor could stop, burying themselves in… nothing? What? Where…? Jamar blinked dumbly, staring at what surely should have been her target's doubly-impaled heart.

Then something collided with her feet and knocked them out from under her, and she fell to the ground. Jamar growled in frustration and anger. Screw this duel nonsense, we're in a battle! She drew in a deep breath and yelled.

"Help! Soldiers, to me!" Only a laugh answered her call.

"Have you truly been ignoring the rest of the battle that completely? All of your soldiers, those that still stand, are too busy to be able to come to you." Jamar frantically rolled over onto her back, desperate to see her assailant so she could dodge, only to be greeted by the sight of a steel wall descending on her head. She dimly recognized that he was bashing her with his shield just in time to know why pounding agony in her head was overwhelming her senses.

Then his blade pierced her throat, and she died confronting House Carlos for the second time. Carlos grinned at Amber, and she returned his grin even brighter, as they held up the product of the morning's work. The product of more than a week of work, really, but most of it had been research and preparations.

They looked over the steel gauntlet, ignoring its finely wrought scales and joints to look deeper at their own handiwork: the complex many-layered array of enchantments engraved on its protected sublayers, a precise duplicate of the enchantments on a royal guard's gauntlet, except clean of any sabotage. Carlos slowly put his right arm into the newly-enchanted gauntlet, flexed his fingers, and reached out with his mana to the enchantments' controls.

They presented themselves to him, exactly as the originals had before, and with a simple press of a button he caused a transparent bubble of force to spring into existence around himself. He pressed a different button, and the force bubble vanished. He turned to Crown Mage Felton, who was watching closely, and presented the gauntlet to him. Felton took the gauntlet and turned it over in his hands, inspecting it. After an extended silent inspection, Felton at last looked up and smiled.

"At only Level 36, it lacks the power of true royal guard equipment, but it is a viable proof of concept – if, that is, you are willing to commit to making these in quantity for the Crown's use or share the secret so that we can make them without you." Carlos shrugged.

"We'll keep working on developing a way to remove the sabotage from existing items. I think having this to compare to may help with that. For now, though, we should check in with Kindar about how the fight with Jamar is going."