Starfall: A LitRPG Adventure (Tower of Somnus Book 3), page 36
He glanced once over their companions before turning to Kat and nodding. With sure, practiced motions, she reached up, cutting through the rope that secured their rowboat. Already, the deck workers overhead would have the next landing craft secured in its own rope harness, ready to descend the moment they left.
“We’re clear!” Kaleek shouted, his teeth flashing white against the roiling ocean behind them as he grinned at the rest of the boat. “Now put your backs into it! I know that the lot of you can’t swim, so the sooner we get to shore, the better. I’d prefer not to die, but if it has to happen, I want it to be with my sword hilt deep in some mole, not plastered by an onager halfway to shore!”
As one, the lokkel heaved, their oars churning the water around their ship. Then they jerked forward, the momentum forcing Kat to reach down and grab one of the metal bars running across the rowboat’s deck for balance.
The shield on the galleon shuddered, deflecting another high end attack. Kat had no way of knowing if the stallesp had cast another spell or if one of their weapon emplacements had found their range, but regardless of the cause, she breathed a sigh of relief as their landing craft rounded the edge of the great wooden vessel and entered open water.
Between their galleon and shore, the water churned. Mana from a half dozen spells fought for control of the waves as spellcasters from both sides struggled to hinder or aid the landing boats.
At least a half dozen of the smaller ships were approaching the harbor forts, forging forward against a hail of arrows that sleeted down at extreme range. Planks and the dorsal fins of harbor sharks marked where spells or heavier weapon emplacements had managed to destroy one or two of the ships.
Kat dismissed that concern from her mind as she shifted her focus back to the stallesp emplacements themselves. Already one was burning, a good portion of its stone outer walls reduced to rubble by the focused attacks of the lokkel fleet. The other still had active wards, reflecting the waves of lightning fire and ice coming off of the ballista bolts back into the waves.
As she watched, it returned fire, a catapult launching a metallic sphere high up into the air. For a second, the object glinted in the sunlight before it pulsed with mana, spraying a geyser of green liquid toward one of the other galleons.
A wall of force that immediately reminded Kat of Gravity Plane sprang into existence, catching the stream and accelerating it downward into the water just in front of the ship. Almost immediately, the green liquid began to hiss and bubble, releasing a cloud of steam that began to eat away at the wards and heavy wooden planks of the galleon.
Then a ballista bolt hit the heavy catapult atop the remaining fortress. It wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the building’s wards, but that didn’t stop the bolt from shattering in a flash of magic and building a dome of roots that encased the weapon emplacement.
Distantly, Kat heard cheering from the galleons as the heavy attacks from the stallesp stopped, leaving only the smaller and more easily deflected attacks from the fortification’s ballista.
Catapult stones continued to rain down on both forts, pummeling their walls and forcing the warriors on their battlements behind cover. The stallesp would still pop out, carefully picking shots at the advancing landing craft, but it was far from the overwhelming waves of arrows that had assaulted the first couple of ships to try to slip past them.
Just as those initial ships began to land, each sporting enough arrows from their deck to resemble a porcupine, Kat’s landing craft came into the stallesp archers’ range. She cast Gravity Plane, twisting to move the shimmering wall of force to catch the handful of inaccurate arrows fired in their direction.
The spell grabbed the projectiles, stealing none of their forward momentum, but instead directing them sharply downward into the waves in front of her boat. To an outsider, it almost looked like their landing craft was simply pushing forward through a gentle rain as the arrows, bolts, and sling stones plopped and splashed around them, but Kat was practically biting through her lip as she struggled to keep track of all the incoming attacks.
Luckily, her upgraded reaction attribute was up to the task. The key was to avoid the attacks that were set to overshoot them. In those cases, intervening with Gravity Plane would likely do more harm than good. For the rest, it was a matter of forcing the plate of energy to move as fast as her mind could shift it in order to intercept and disarm the projectiles. If it were only one fort, her task might be easier, but despite the severe damage done to the burning structure, there were still a handful of stallesp manning its walls and making her life difficult.
As they approached, her task only increased, the arrows carrying more velocity and giving her much less time to measure and judge their approach. A handful made it through. Most buried themselves in the sides of the landing craft harmlessly, but at least one struck the lokkel rowing in front of her.
Without missing a beat, Kaleek jumped backward from the prow, pulling the crossbow bolt from the grimacing lizard’s arm with a swift, sure motion before upending a potion of some sort on the injury. With a hiss, an acrid burning smell filled Kat’s nostrils, and she tried not to think about how painful the healing salve must have been, but the lokkel only missed a handful of strokes before it was back to full strength, helping propel them past the looming fortresses.
Just as they passed the two forts, the burning one on the left exploded, one of the mana reservoirs powering its wards finally penetrated by a ballista bolt. Heat and wind assaulted Kat as she frantically repositioned Gravity Plane to catch the torso-sized chunks of masonry and slam them into the water before they hit her ship.
A sling bullet slammed into her lower back as she ignored the remaining fort, the attack’s force blunted heavily by her enchanted armor, robbing her of a good fifteen percent of her mana reserves and leaving a bruise nonetheless.
Then they were through, through the gauntlet of fortifications with all passengers intact and into the small but deep harbor the stallesp had carved into the side of the island. A number of residences and what looked like a makeshift adventurer’s hall lined the sandy beaches of the island, but it was hard to care about such mundane things.
In the center of the harbor loomed a galleon, almost ten percent bigger than any of the ships that had brought the lokkel attack force to the island. Stallesp ran about its deck, trying to prepare the ship to sail, and at least a couple were cranking the winch of a catapult built into the ship’s bow.
Ahead on the beach were a handful of abandoned landing ships. Even as Kat watched, another lokkel boat slid ashore, disgorging its five surviving warriors. They ran up the beach, joining a cluster of other individuals that were trying to battle their way through a cluster of stallesp that were guarding the gangway that connected the galleon to the small village.
“There she is, Kat,” Kaleek remarked from next to her. “The ships outside the harbor have the remaining fort dead to rights, but that boat is our last true obstacle. If we take her, that’s the battle. Hundreds of younger avatars avenged and a substantial setback for stallesp plans in the Tower.”
“Then let’s storm the thing,” Kat responded, wiping the sweat from her brow as she popped one of the cubes of restorative ‘gum’ in her mouth. “I’ve had enough of being on the defensive. It’s time to make the stallesp feel the sting too.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The crossbow thumped against Kat’s shoulder, unloading its payload into the furry body of a stallesp. The bolt slipped past the creature’s half-donned armor and buried itself in its shoulder. It squealed and stumbled backward, hatchet dropping from its hands as it clutched helplessly at the arrow.
Its confusion only lasted for a half second before a lokkel thrust forward, spitting it on a war spear while blocking another stallesp’s wild swing with a warhammer on a metal shield held in the big lizard’s other two hands. As soon as the mole’s companion went down, the lokkel dropped their spear, reaching up with their top arm to grab the haft of the hammer. For an eyeblink, the lizard held the warhammer wide, leaving the stallesp exposed. Then their lower arm darted forward, claws exposed, to rip the enemy warrior’s throat out.
Kat slowed her jog toward the struggle to fold her bow up before clipping it to her back. A burst of stamina invested in Cat Step sped her up enough to catch up with the rest of her team just before they hit the line of stallesp.
It was hardly even worth their effort. The soldiers that had come to meet the lokkel forces were low level and poorly equipped, sacrificial pawns that ran out to meet the invaders with whatever weapons and armor were immediately on hand in order to buy the rest of their base more time.
Kaleek and Dorrik tore through them, not even bothering to use skills. Their blades flashed in the fake sunlight of the Tower, moving too fast and striking too hard for the stallesp to effectively counter them. Even if one of their opponents managed to get a blade or a shield up in time, more often than not, the first blow was more than enough to spill them to the ground. After that, a quick follow up blow was all it took to finish the downed fighter.
As for Kat? She didn’t fare quite as well as Kaleek and Dorrik, but she did her fair share of damage. Her fighting style focused more on mobility, drawing an attack from an opponent and then finishing them with a flurrying of sharp, decisive blows while they were overextended. It didn’t lend itself well to the crush and clamor of the crowd, and it certainly didn’t let her overcome her opponents with brute strength.
Still, as yet more landing craft ground into the beach behind them, the delaying action in front of the galleon began to crumble. None of the stallesp ran. After all, dying in the Tower simply meant not having a subscription until their sponsors could purchase them another, no actual harm would come to them.
At the same time, they didn’t put up nearly as much of a fight. The moles knew that their companions had left them behind as a sacrifice against a foe that outmatched them. Once they were outnumbered two to one, they just didn’t fight with as much fire.
Barely two minutes from the start of the fight, the last stallesp fell on the beach. A quick glance at the galleon drew Kat’s mouth into a grim line. The moles swarmed over the ship, drawing its sails to try to catch enough wind to pull it away from the dock while a dozen or so pushed against the bottom of the harbor with long wooden poles.
Worse still, almost two dozen stallesp lined the deck near the gangplank, blocking entry. The actual wooden walkway to the ship itself was barely wide enough for three warriors at a time, meaning that anyone that led the way would be swamped by the defenders in no time.
A crossbow bolt whizzed into the sand nearby. Kat whipped her head to the side, taking note of a trio of stallesp manning each of the three crow’s nests that topped the ship’s masts. At any point in time, two of the sailors were frantically loading crossbows while the third aimed and shot.
Another arrow zipped downward, but rather than finding the beach, it buried itself in the throat of one of the lokkel. Kat ran to help them only for one of their comrades to wave her off. The downed lizard gasped once, choking on its own blood before the life left their eyes.
The other lokkel were right. A Wood tier healing skill wasn’t enough to restore the number of hit points lost from an arrow to the throat. Her spell could heal a broken limb or a deep slash, but in the cases of a pressing injury, it was little more than a waste of mana.
“Lokkel!” Kat’s head whipped backward at Akkast’s shout. The reddish lizard stepped off of a landing boat onto the white-yellow sand of the beach. A huge recurve bow, crafted from monster horn and carefully lacquered until it gleamed in the sun, was held in their lower pair of hands.
“Tarmok and Kra’Tkrat have engaged the enemy spellcaster in the remaining fortress,” Akkast continued, striding purposefully onto the beach. One of their upper hands whipped out as they spoke, slapping a crossbow bolt from the air. “The way is open! We must storm the stallesp galleon before it can push off. If it makes it to open water, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to catch up to it and finish it, making this entire operation for naught.”
Their speech was cut short as an axe, almost as big as Kat’s torso, whipped through the air, slamming into the ground where Akkast had been standing with a geyser of sand. The lokkel finished their roll, coming up in a crouch with their bow at ready, their left two arms holding the weapon itself while their right two drew back the string.
Akkast fired, their arms glowing red and the air itself thrumming in Kat’s lungs as they released the string. The arrow screamed toward the galleon, producing a high-pitched whine that made Kat’s teeth ache, even at a distance.
A stallesp stepped into the open on the forecastle of the enemy galleon, clad neck to ankles in dull black armor and holding a tower shield in its left arm as big as its entire body. And its body was huge. The creature was easily a head taller than the lokkel around Kat, let alone the shorter stallesp. The worst part was that it didn’t look ‘tall.’ Instead, the stallesp was built like a mountain, layers of muscle and fur making it look completely natural, like its companions were unnaturally short rather than it being an absolute giant.
It raised its shield casually, angling it slightly to the side in an almost dismissive motion just as Akkast’s arrow was about to strike. Wards flashed on the galleon’s deck, glowing white for a millisecond before shattering under the sudden attack, but it barely mattered.
The arrow exploded against the shield, emitting a screech that staggered half the battlefield. Other than the armored warrior, the stallesp on the forecastle collapsed bonelessly, occasionally twitching spasmodically as their nerves fired semi-randomly. That said, the massive stallesp only took one step backward, its shield glowing red from the use of a defensive skill.
It pointed toward the beach with its left hand, and the axe buried in the sand near Akkast transformed into a lightning bolt, burning back through the air until it slammed into the stallesp’s hand, reconstituting itself in a shower of sparks.
“And that,” Kaleek said, nudging Kat in the ribs, “is why we try to avoid enemies with evolved classes and Silver tier skills if possible. The three of us working together can probably take one down, but as big of a jump as Iron tier skills are, an upgraded class and Silver tier skills leave them in their wake.”
“But we must be prepared for that eventuality,” Dorrik cut in, nodding toward the battle at the front of the galleon. “There are a great number of stallesp, and it is possible that Akkast will need help. If possible, we should avoid evolved warriors, but if our help is needed, we must stand ready to provide that help.”
Kat nodded thoughtfully, turning her gaze to the gangplank as she chewed her restorative gum thoughtfully. The lokkel were doing their best, but this time they were fighting prepared foes. The stallesp guarding the entrance to the galleon were wearing full sets of armor and wielding weapons tailored to their individual fighting styles. The attackers were fighting hard, perhaps a little better than the stallesp defending the gangplank, but ultimately the problem was width.
Only three of the big lizards could attack the defenders at once, letting the stallesp hold the line, delaying the lokkel from boarding the ship where their greater numbers could be put to proper use. Of course, it wasn’t even an inevitability that the lokkel would be able to board the ship. Already the galleon was beginning to move under the combined effort of the wind and the sailors heaving at the poles plunged into the silty floor of the harbor.
On the ground, archers and wizards traded attacks with their counterparts on the galleon, but more often than not, one of the big ship’s wards would flare to life, deflecting an attack or absorbing it entirely. In short, they were playing a long game of attrition and waiting, one that they were likely to lose unless someone could break up the stalemate on the galleon’s deck.
Kat bit her lip, chewing fretfully as she glanced over the massive ship, trying to think of another option. Finally, she sighed. Lokkel were dying as she wasted time.
“I have a plan,” she said, eyes still on the galleon’s deck, “but it is very dumb and I’ll need backup.”
“Perhaps we should think this—” Dorrik began only for Kaleek to interrupt them.
“Already on board, Kat.” She could practically see the grinning otter behind her.
“Kaleek,” Kat continued, turning around and putting a hand on the desoph’s arm as she cast Levitation on herself. “I need you to throw me at the ship.”
His grin spread, almost becoming painfully wide. The otter slammed his sword into the ground and reached for Kat as he responded, “Ever since you learned that gravity spell, I’ve been waiting for this moment. I thought you’d never ask, Kat.”
She finished her second casting of Levitation as Kaleek picked her up, feeling herself lighten until she actually began to float slightly away. Doubling up on the same spell began to burn through her mana at an unsustainable rate, but she wouldn’t need both of the castings for long. The desoph’s fingers dug into her side, holding her in place as Kaleek pulled her down, rotating slightly to the side so that he would be able to get the maximum torque for his coming throw.
“Now, Miss Kat!” Dorrik interjected, alarm in their voice, but Kat cut them off instead.
“Lokkel are dying and I can break the gridlock this way,” she offered, curling her body into a ball to cut down on wind resistance. “I should be able to clear things up within a couple seconds of landing, but I expect to have almost every other stallesp hunting me the moment that happens. Just promise to pull me out of this mess as soon as possible and everything will be fine.”
Before the lokkel could reply, Kaleek spun once, rotating like a discus thrower before launching Kat’s less than weightless body toward the stallesp galleon. For a brief moment, she could feel her lunch churning in her throat, and then the sensation of acceleration ended.
Kat opened her eyes. She was already halfway to the stallesp ship and steadily rising higher into the air. One of the archers manning a crow’s nest took aim at her only to duck back under the wooden railing when a trio of Ego Shards from Dorrik peppered the air around him, buying Kat the half second she needed to cut off the second instance of Levitation.
