Chương 240: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 240 - The Fall of the First Fortress

Many soldiers on the city wall were collapsed on the ground like that, stunned senseless by the flood of spell light. They had never seen so many mages in their entire lives. Even the most prestigious magic academy in all of Anlius, Saint Roland Magic Academy, only had a little over 300 mages. That included seventy or eighty lecturers. How many were they seeing now? The spell lights shooting up from outside the wall were so dense they blurred together.

In less than half a minute, exploding Inferno Blast Fireballs had already set the entire wall ablaze. There had to be at least several thousand enemy mages. Where had that many mages come from? If not for the fact that the soldiers below the wall all had black hair, they might have thought the neighboring Aililan Empire had suddenly launched an invasion of Anlius. This was a force they could not stop. For many of those soldiers, this was the first time in their lives they had ever seen a mage alive.

In this age of waning magic, mages were becoming fewer and fewer. But their status had not fallen. It had only risen. The greater difficulty of cultivation had not weakened spell power. On the contrary, thanks to more advanced meditation methods, more intricate casting gestures, and more profound spell arrays, the magic released by mages now was even stronger than it had been before. Maybe it was only a brief flash. But it was still deadly.

"Don't kill me, Mage Lords, don't kill me... I have, I have a wife and kids at home, wuwu..." As mage players climbed onto the wall one after another, soldiers finally broke. Trapped on the wall by raging fire, they could only kneel and kowtow, begging for mercy. Their long, idle lives had already stripped them of a soldier's edge and any belief in defending their country. Now they only wanted to live. Even if they had to live like dogs.

"These people are perfect targets. This is the moment you transform from ordinary people into iron-blooded soldiers!"

"Kill them!" Oda Tanefeed barked orders at the players under his command, but the players still couldn't quite accept the fact that they had to take the lives of a group of their own kind. In the end, they were not trained soldiers in reality. They were just ordinary people who went to work or school. Faced with this situation, Oda Tanefeed had his own solution.

He walked up to the soldiers who had lost all will to fight, drew the longsword at his waist, and stabbed one of the men at the edge to death in a single blow. Then he said coldly, "If you want to live, get up and resist. Fight. Kill. Otherwise, I'll kill every last one of you, one by one. If you can break through and escape, I'll let you go." The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Their comrade had collapsed beside them. Warm blood soaked their knees.

Fear of death drove them on. If they fought, they still had a sliver of hope. If they stayed on their knees, they were dead for sure. They trembled as they rose, drew their swords, and staggered toward the players. Their twisted, awkward slashing motions made anyone wonder whether they could even hurt an enemy.

"Don't come any closer. If you come any closer, I'll attack!" The Sakura players looked at the Anlius soldiers, who were howling, crying, and snotting all over themselves, and for a moment they actually felt a flicker of panic. The despair in those eyes held a will to die, but it also carried a desperate hunger to live. It made the players' hearts tremble. This was life struggling one last time before the God of Death. This was a fight to the death. Closer and closer.

The players subconsciously raised their weapons.

"This is your fault!" They shut their eyes and slashed their longswords forward wildly. Even without aiming, the difference in level and equipment was still there. The Anlius soldiers' swords slammed into the players' fine-grade armor, but they couldn't even break through. Yet the players' blades, even swung carelessly, easily cut through the Anlius defenders' thin leather armor. Blood splashed everywhere. A few drops of warm blood slipped into their mouths. The taste of rust spread through their mouths.

The players opened their eyes. The Anlius defenders' corpses were strewn in pools of blood. Their expressions hadn't even fully stiffened yet. Only the light in their eyes was still fading little by little.

"I... we, we killed someone?" The Sakura players' pupils contracted. They stared in disbelief at the bloody scene on the ground. Their hands were slick with the sticky blood of the Anlius soldiers. It was all so real. Just as the great being that had descended above Shuilan Star had said, this was a real world, just half-datafied. And yet the emptied health bars and the gray information panels brought by death created an overwhelming sense of wrongness.

That wrongness diluted the fear in their hearts and the discomfort of taking a life.

"You did very well!" Oda Tanefeed clapped, looking pleased. Some things only have two states: zero times, and countless times.

"Understand this. These people are our enemies. They're the stumbling blocks standing in the way of Sakura's rise! And they're just cold data!" The discomfort from their first kill slowly faded under Oda Tanefeed's persuasion, and their guilt gradually disappeared too, because the players around them had also killed. Since everyone was doing it, then... It didn't seem like such a big deal. The savage beastliness hidden in their bloodline was being unlocked, bit by bit, like a genetic lock.

Even the Sakura players themselves didn't realize that the panic and fear on their faces had turned fierce and crazed in that instant.

"Now, follow me and keep attacking! We will take the entire fortress. Leave no survivors!"

"If you do well, then..." Oda Tanefeed paused, turned around, and pointed with his finger toward the rear of the fortress, where the protected houses and villages stood.

"See those houses?"

"That's where the people of Anlius live."

"We've been in this world for so long. A lot of Sakura's fine men haven't had a chance to let loose yet."

"This time, we'll have some fun. Take it as a reward for your growth." Oda Tanefeed grinned viciously. He stood high on the wall platform, full of swagger. At that moment, he felt as though he had overlapped with the figures of those predecessors he admired so much in history. Back then, they had faced an ancient and powerful nation. Now, he was only facing a tiny little country. As the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Oda Tanefeed did not think he was inferior to those predecessors. He was only leading a bunch of rookies who were afraid even to kill, and he was conquering an even more powerful otherworld. His name, Oda Tanefeed, would one day go down in history!... [World Announcement: Players from Sakura No. 10 Newbie Town, led by Town Chief Oda Tanefeed, have broken through the First Fortress of the Anlius Kingdom. This invasion killed 1, 738 otherworld soldiers. As the first newbie town to capture an otherworldly human military structure, a special reward is hereby granted!] [Reward One: All players of Sakura No. 10 Newbie Town gain 3 levels. Town Chief Oda Tanefeed gains 5 levels.] [Reward Two: Golden item obtained, Fortress Construction Token. Possessing the Fortress Construction Token allows a Newbie Town to be upgraded into a Fortress.] [Reward Three: All players of Sakura No. 10 Newbie Town gain a 10% increase in the efficiency of obtaining Invasion Points.] Large red characters floated across the vision of every player on the entire continent. They all abruptly stopped what they were doing. Their eyes widened. And then the uproar broke out. ➤ Next: The New Summoner