Somehow, the short time they'd arrived in Tithor and settled down at Ode's house, an army had lined itself around the outer walls and began firing in with mortars.
In mere seconds, the thriving community area had been washed away by fire and shrapnel. So much so that one would be hardpressed to find a meter square of the place that was untouched by the devastation.
The horror of modern weaponry.
Conventional wars pitted man against man, army against army, and steel against flesh. Waves upon waves of men would crash upon each other with abbadon.
Guns and explosives made those numbers moot. With a handful of men they could deploy a roper and effective offensive, and nobody would be the wiser... Until the first shell dropped.
And by then it was just a matter of panicked screams from those who were running for their lives and the silence of those who no longer had the opportunity to do so.
This time, simply 4 men hauling off on a pickup truck made a blitz for the front of the gates. With everything they could fit on the back of it, they found little trouble suppressing the defenders standing high upon the walls.
Their target, after all, was not to kill.
It was to send a message.
One which said, if you pop your head up, you get a 5mm piercing for free.
This while the rest of their friends arrive a little later with a whole set of fireworks which would put any independence day parades to shame. Once, they'd set up a perimeter it was all a matter of when exactly they wanted to light up the city.
Travis stewed there for some time, there was really nothing much he or his men could do but watch passively. At best, they could put out the fires to salvage the some of the buildings, which at that point was maybe one and a half or two walls with a patch of ceiling.
It was either that or helping some of the stragglers evacuate. But really who needed the assistance right now to know that the best direction right now was away from the fire and loud noises.
Mages found themselves to be pretty decent replacement to fire hoses and they ran around casting spells. The warriors on the other hand found themselves quite useless, as even with their strength, there was only so many buckets they could carry back and forth.
Neither however, were effective countermeasures to the situation at hand, as every shell that landed would undo several soldier's work in the snap of a finger. Those previous one or two walls were now "developable real-estate" once a stray shell landed.
At this point, two people popped their heads into his command.
"Excuse me, I hope we're not disturbing you."
For one of them, he felt a little relieved albeit, unwilling to meet at his point. The other one, he wasn't sure how he should feel about her.
"What are you doing here?" He asked, realizing a little late, that they shouldn't have been able to enter the inner chambers of command in the first place.
"Don't worry, they did their job well by trying to stop us from entering." Grendolyn replied with a smirk. "Of course the emphasis would be try, right now they're enjoying a dirt nap."
"You killed them!? you son of a..." Travis lunged at her.
In response, Ode simply stepped between them, stopping Travis's advance for a few seconds. Giving him enough time to pull away the curtain, behind which was several of Travis's men.
Who at the moment were buried up to their neck...
He looked at the sorry states of his subordinates and finally realized that the lady Ode had brought with him was immensely more powerful than he imagined. When he remembered how earlier in the day he had ignored her killing intent he started to sweat bullets.
Any type of mage needed to charge their spell before activation. As soldiers in a higher tier kingdom, his men were so attuned to this activation sequence that they could react to magicians who were trying to attack from a mile away.
Even then the battles between mages and warriors were a little unfair as mages though holding more firepower generally had to keep their distance but at the same time, if they attack from too far a warrior had a larger chance of dodging the spell. And these were restrictions that were met if a mage wanted to attack one on one. Unless they were using attacks with an explosion radius it was difficult to hit several people at a time, and it should take way longer to charge and cast several spells to attack everyone in a group. If it required a measure of control, the spells effects would take longer to work on their opponents giving them ample time to avoid the attack.
In the first place, warriors had many advantages in a battle against a mage. Though the latter held more firepower and had range on their side, mages had many more variables to consider.
One was range, where they needed to maintain enough distance so that they could complete their spell without being turned into a life sized hand puppet first, but go too far and there was no way their adversary would be where they targeted their shot in the first place.
And that was just the case if it was a one on one. In this lady's case, it was one against his whole squad.
Having fought his fair share of powerful enemy mages in his lifetime he found that he almost always preferred attacking in a group. The mage would be hardpressed to do significant damage against them unless he or she used an area spell, which for all intents and purposes required more time and concentration than simple single target spells.
If on the off chance, the mage decided to cast several spells to target each one of them instead, then their fate was set in stone.
This lady's existence spat on that theory. With the condition of his men and the lingering mana in the air, it was easy to tell that none of them had the chance to even move from their guarding positions to even obstruct her as she cast a personal shallow grave for each of them.
These were no conscripted soldiers, each hand picked and trained or the absolute worst situations of combat. They could react before anyone could draw their weapons or finish the first line of their chant. Even as their captain, Travis had to admit that he was at most a match to 5 of them head on. Any more than that then he was prepared to have his ass handed to him.
None of that meant anything in front of her, at their levels they might as well have been still targets for her to practice on. He figured that her concentration was still faster even when it was divided by all the people under him. If only he knew she didn't even have to expend an iota of her focus on them much less divide her full one, he'd be frustrating at her feet right now.
"W... wh... who are you?" He asked through gritted teeth.