Floor 14: Defense of the Drina River (1)

"Reinforcements sent by God have arrived! In five hours, the 588th Bombardment Brigade, the Night Witches, will reach us. Hold the line until then! All forces—battle stations!"

"Battle stations!"

"Battle stations!"

At the thunderous roar and the echoing call-and-response that followed, my head snapped back instinctively.

And I wasn't the only one. The staggering number of climbers summoned in front of the river all turned around at once.

An army of what looked like a hundred thousand strong.

At its head rode a commander astride a white horse.

Silver armor, a golden ponytail cascading down to her waist.

Every climber's gaze locked onto the warrior gripping a spear nearly three meters long.

But a title like Legion Commander wasn't given out for nothing—Katley Monaka accepted those stares without so much as a flicker of acknowledgment.

The commander drew a deep breath and bellowed once more.

"May the Shadow of the Veil watch over us! Glory to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Deiorn Empire and to His Imperial Majesty, father of the empire! For the Shadow and the Emperor!"

"For the Shadow and the Emperor!"

"FOR the Shadow and the Emperor!"

"All forces! Advance to the banks of the Drina River!"

The moment the commander finished, the army began to move.

The soldiers paid no mind to the climbers who'd been summoned abruptly at their front.

Huh. These people really aren't fazed that we just popped out of nowhere.

Well, they did call us 'reinforcements sent by God'...

This was a Tower trial, after all. Some kind of Tower-side smoothing probably smoothed things over for them.

Or maybe, on other planets, getting summoned like this simply wasn't a big deal.

Speaking of which—these imperial troops are badly outnumbered.

The imperial army numbered around a hundred thousand.

The enemies closing in from across the river looked to be at least seven times that.

They filled the plains and the sky beyond the water so completely that it was hard even to count them.

But... we climbers outnumbered the imperial army on our own side.

Right, that's probably exactly what makes this our trial.

The climbers numbered roughly three times the imperial force.

Three hundred thousand, give or take.

Staring at that number, I felt a pang of something like grief.

Three hundred thousand was no small figure—but we had started with a million.

More than seventy percent had died on the way to Floor 14.

Hoo. Now's not the time to be waxing sentimental.

The imperial army was heading toward the climbers' right flank.

Shouldn't they at least tell us how they wanted us to fight?

They hadn't even consulted us—the people who'd appeared out of thin air.

Yet the soldiers fell in behind the legion commander and shifted right as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Complaints burst out of the stunned climbers.

"What the hell is this? We're supposed to just start fighting with zero explanation?"

"Seriously, that commander should at least tell us how this is going to go!"

"What are we even supposed to do here?"

"Taevorn! Party leader! Where are you?!"

Several hundred thousand climbers had been left to stew in total confusion.

This really was war the instant we set foot on the floor.

If I hadn't heard Heijeong's briefing beforehand, I'd have been frozen right there in the chaos with the rest of them.

Even knowing what was coming, I'd frozen for a moment anyway...

This is no time for that.

This was a battlefield where hundreds of thousands would collide.

A battlefield for the Sobornites—and a battlefield for the people of Earth as well.

I had to snap three hundred thousand climbers out of it. That was the staggering truth of it.

I poured mana into my voice.

"Climbers! This is Kwon Suhyeok! Don't panic—form ranks! This trial is war! Get ahold of yourselves and survive! Survive, and we go on to Floor 15! Battle stations!"

The mana-laden voice rolled across the plain like a storm.

It wasn't anything grand. I'd never been much of an orator to begin with.

Stay sharp and survive. A statement of the obvious, nothing more.

But I meant every word.

From Floor 14 onward, the trials chained together all the way to Floor 19.

According to Heijeong, none of them would be anything close to easy.

And Floors 14 through 16 especially...

In the first timeline, those were the floors where the Earth's climbers had suffered the most deaths since entering the Tower of Trials.

Everyone needed their wits about them.

"Who's that? What's with her?"

"He says his name's Kwon Suhyeok."

"What? Kwon Suhyeok? Rank 1?!"

"Fuck it! I don't know what's going on, but he's right. Everybody get your heads on and prepare for battle!"

"Damn it! Yeah—we made it this far, we're not dying here. Weapons up, people!"

Amid the murmuring, starting from someone's shout, the climbers began gripping their weapons one by one.

At last, the chaos began to settle.

I put mana into my voice again.

"Warriors to the front! Any mages, archers, and priests who can fight in melee, come forward—everyone else, fall back!"

"Melee fighters to the front! Everyone else, fall back!"

"Melee fighters to the front!"

Starting with my voice, similar shouts rose from all directions and spread through all three hundred thousand climbers.

Once they'd collected themselves, the climbers moved with remarkable discipline.

It wasn't perfect, but that was unavoidable.

They'd been summoned at random in the first place, so the ranks were badly misaligned to begin with.

I told Dobby to go find Heijeong, then ran to the front of the formation and started organizing the warriors.

Warriors with shields and spears went as far forward as possible, with the swordsmen prepared for melee scraps lined up behind them.

By the time the formation looked roughly presentable, a familiar voice rang out from the rear.

"Priests and archers, don't bunch up—spread out! You need coverage across the entire front line! Mages, cluster up at range! It's better to set targets by unit!"

It was Heijeong.

She was working the field with fierce intensity, and the mages were following her orders almost like devoted disciples.

She had dumped a mountain of magic-related information onto the community boards...

Among the mages, she'd apparently become something of an icon.

I turned my eyes back to the river.

The enemy was still advancing from far off. Having finished organizing our ranks earlier than expected, we ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had breathing room to spare.

A brief standoff.

...Guess that's a mercy?

The battleground wasn't the entire river.

Bathed in bright moonlight, the Drina River stretched away into the distance—a colossal river more than a kilometer and a half across.

But the stretch where we now stood was comparatively narrow, roughly six hundred meters.

At that width, I figured the climbers and the Sobornite army could hold it.

The imperial army's already demolished every bridge, for one thing.

Along the river, I could see the wreckage of collapsed bridges.

I didn't see any boats among the approaching enemy, either...

The notification windows popping up over their heads explained why.

Lizardmen.

I'd met them in the boss room on Floor 11.

There was a difference between personal floors and shared floors, between guardians and common soldiers—so they wouldn't be that strong. But their numbers were brutal.

Every last one of the enemy was a lizardman. Presumably they intended to simply swim across.

The imperial army must have known it too, because their front line was entirely spearmen.

Pikes over four meters long.

The plan was obvious: skewer anything that tried to come over the river the moment it surfaced.

"By the will of God, ruler of the Nine Skies, Kar-lein is with us! For the stillness of the Black Well, for Ruk-Tor! For Kar-lein!"

"For Ruk-Tor! For Kar-lein!"

The moment the lizardman army reached the bank, with their commander's cry, they hurled themselves into the river without a shred of warning.

Splash—splash—the sound of churning water never stopped.

And just like that, the war had begun.

Hm. They don't hesitate either, huh.

Charging the instant they arrived—no preamble at all.

Fortunately, Heijeong and I had prepared a countermeasure for exactly this.

Not yet. Not yet. We had to wait a little longer.

"Loose!"

"Loose!"

And with that, the archers on both sides—the lizardman army and our own—began unleashing their arrows.

Two seconds.

That was how long it took for the exceptionally bright moonlight to vanish behind a storm of arrows.

So few climbers had chosen the archer class that we were outnumbered in raw arrowfire.

But the mages made up for the deficit.

"Barrier fifty meters above allied positions!"

"Barrier, fifty meters up!"

Tudududuk—

The drumming of arrows against the barrier was unceasing.

I let out a breath of relief and turned my eyes back to the riverbank.

At some point the lizardmen had already reached the middle of the river. Their ability to move freely underwater wasn't there for show.

They seemed faster in the water than they were on land.

The wyverns are still circling overhead.

Thousands—no, easily over ten thousand—wyverns wheeled through the open sky.

Waiting for their moment, it looked like.

Presumably they'd strike the instant the lizardmen touched our bank.

But fat chance.

Under the concentrated barrage we'd prepared, the wyverns' descent would be useless.

Twenty meters to contact.

Right on cue, the wyverns' movements turned frantic.

And I spent a third of my mana to draw up the Essence of Lightning.

Kwadeudeuk— kwadeudeuk—

Lightning seared above my palm, burning away the darkness of the plain.

Then I brought the lightning down onto the Drina River.

"Kyeek!"

"Kyeee-eee-ee..."

"Kye-ee..."

The lightning spread wide and deep.

This was lightning under my conscious control—nothing like ordinary lightning skittering across the surface of the water.

I drove it down deep enough to reach the lizardmen who'd been swimming across the river's depths.

That was exactly why I'd invested a third of my mana.

Whoa. My mana is refilling way too fast.

However many I'd just killed, the mana flooding back in exceeded what I'd even started with.

This was a different situation from Floor 13, different from anything I'd predicted.

My plan had been to hold the river with lightning until I was down to my last dregs of mana...

Instead, the surplus got sucked into the Mana Accumulation Gauntlet and stored away.

Is it because they're lizardmen and not little bugs?

At this rate, I could seal the river completely until time ran out.

Things were going more smoothly than expected.

The 75,000-point purchase was worth every point, after all...

"Wh-what was that?"

"Wh-what just happened?"

"God is helping us! G-God is helping us!"

Climbers and Sobornites alike, dazed, were staring over at my side of the field.

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠people around me knew the lightning had come from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me—but those farther away had only seen a flash of blinding light, hence the spectacle.

But this was no time to sit around with my head in the clouds.

I roared again with mana in my voice.

"The wyverns! Target the wyverns!"

The descending wyverns had belatedly panicked, completely at a loss.

Circle back into the sky, or shut your eyes and keep diving anyway.

The ones who kept diving were the prey.

"Shoot down the wyverns!"

"Target the wyverns!"

Struck by arrows and magical bombardment, the wyverns began raining out of the sky.

Mist was rising off the Drina River, born of the lightning.

And through that mist, countless dark corpses were drifting away on the current.

The river was done. All that remained was to seal the sky.

Just as Heijeong said, I had no idea what would happen when that thing appeared later...

Four hours had passed, and the enemy had attempted three crossings.

The first had come in a rush right after my lightning strike. They'd probably assumed I couldn't keep casting it indefinitely.

But I fired off the same lightning three more times, and the lizardmen gave up on further crossings.

After that, nothing of note happened.

A standoff in silence.

Only the occasional useless volley of arrows darkened the sky—every one of them swallowed by the barrier.

And when exactly eight hours remained on the clock, just as Heijeong had foretold, the dragon appeared.

"KRWAARAARAARAAR—!"

The dragon's roar swallowed the Drina River whole.

A dragon so vast it blotted out the moon.

What size was that...

It looked at least three times bigger than Herkest, whom I'd met on Floor 11.

Even knowing it was coming, I was left speechless.

But the dragon didn't attack us.

After unleashing its colossal cry, it simply rose and climbed toward the upper reaches of the river.

And moments later, the flow of water coming down from upstream began to grow shallower and shallower.

The current weakened, and slowly the river began to shrink.

It was the moment my belief that I'd sealed the river crumbled to pieces.

"For Ruk-Tor, for Kar-lein! All forces, CHARGE!"

And the enemy's assault began anew.