Ice Spear
“The FogHogs have recognized the turret’s landing. Their top behavioral priority is being reset to ‘destroy the turret.’”
Ho-yeong’s read on the situation had been dead on.
The Totem of Unity had given the FogHogs one overriding directive: destroy the turret. But since the turret was floating in midair, beyond their reach, their priorities had shifted to “remove the obstacle” and “survive.”
- Pfohog!
The FogHogs charged forward in a loose line abreast, but compared to their first ferocious rush, they were sluggish now.
They had healed themselves inside the fog of their own breath, yes, but the time had been too short for them to fully recover.
“They’ve definitely weakened. That’s not a charge anymore, it’s a shuffle. Good, now we’ve got an angle! Ballista, ready?”
“Ready, sir!”
“We’re ready now!”
Sera and Shrakhim, who had been repairing the ballista in the front section of the wagon, shouted back with vigor.
The one ballista in the armory was a decent size, but it had needed maintenance.
It’d be nice if we could mount it on a cart and use it that way, but in this state...
Byeonbangbaek, if you’ve got time to spare, leave it to me.
That was when Sera stepped up.
I’ll help as well. If it’s a ballista, I can handle one more or less.
Oh? Is that so? Come to think of it, you were the one talking about firing a ballista back in Kihara territory. Then Shrakhim can take the gunner’s seat.
His swordsmanship was only at Iron Sword level, so Shrakhim wasn’t particularly outstanding as a knight, but oddly enough he knew a fair bit about archery, especially heavy crossbows.
But what are you planning to fire?
Right. There aren’t any big trees or rocks around here, so what do we do?
A heavy launcher was useless if there was nothing to launch.
I heard some fruit seller woman saying you got scammed earlier. Why not just yank out one of the shop’s pillars and use that? Leave it to me, Byeonbangbaek. I’ll hack one off with my axe.
Oh, that’s tempting. But the lighter we can keep the wagon, the better. Storing a giant wooden pillar would be a space problem too.
Then what do you intend to do?
We’ll make missiles as we need them. We’ve got a mage, don’t we?
Ho-yeong had brushed it off as if it were nothing.
“If the ballista’s repaired, then prepare the ammunition!”
And now the projectile was being made by Macdonaf.
“This is truly convenient. To think you have such high-grade, concentrated mana water at hand.”
With the mana-water jar set out in a chilled pot, they could push the weapon’s power to the limit without worrying about mana.
“Mana Condensation! Freeze!”
The mana water sloshing inside the jar surged upward and froze solid.
Winter, born in the heart of an autumn night, took on the shape of a spear.
“The night air’s cold, and the mana water in the cooling jar’s cold too. Perfect weather for making Ice Bolts.”
Ho-yeong looked on with satisfaction at the ice spear forming in midair.
“Man, that’s not a spear anymore. That’s practically a missile. Like one of those giant siege arrows.”
It was huge, thick, and solid, more like a beam than a weapon.
“Then load it!”
Since the ice spear was so large and cold, Macdonaf had tried to move it with a spatial transfer spell, but...
“Why waste mana moving it? We can just lift it.”
“Eh? Your hands won’t get cold, lass?”
Shrakhim gaped at Sera as she casually hoisted the ice spear.
“I’ll help too, so let’s lift it together... Aaaagh, that’s cold! My hand!”
The instant he touched it, he jerked away.
“Cold? What’s cold about it? Yelling like it’s nothing worse than wash water is the real eyesore here.”
Dwarves had immense resistance to flame and frost. Sera’s thick hands didn’t care in the least.
“Ugh...”
Shrakhim’s pride flared, and he awkwardly wrapped aura around his hands before lifting the ice spear.
That was thanks to Ho-yeong teaching him how to use aura properly, in order to make him useful if they were going to bring him along at all.
“Aigoo, uncle, your legs are shaking so bad. What are you going to do? You look like you’re only about forty at most, tsk tsk.”
“...I’m twenty.”
“What?! Twenty? You’re only two years older than me? Don’t joke around! No matter how badly dwarves misjudge human ages, at least say something that makes sense. You’re giving me goosebumps, so stop talking so formally and just speak normally, all right?”
“Very well, so cease this nonsense...”
Before placing the ice spear on the launcher frame, they first had to draw back the bowstring.
“So what do I do now?”
“First, we need to lock the bowstring. I’ll handle it, so watch closely.”
The dwarf girl, who had never handled a ballista before, watched intently as Shrakhim pulled the string.
This ballista worked by twisting sturdy ropes to generate tension, so loading it required brute force. Shrakhim, clumsy with aura, could manage only to wrap it around his upper body.
“Urrrgh!”
Yet for something like drawing a huge, heavy bowstring, that weakness became an advantage. He only had to plant his feet and strain with all his strength.
“Huh. Still, for a human, you’re pretty strong, aren’t you?”
Not trusting that flimsy lower body of his, Sera stepped in front of him and helped crank the winch that tightened the string.
“Your belly’s sticking out like a dwarf’s after too many mugs of beer. Well, at least it makes a nice cushion.”
Sera leaning against Shrakhim’s waist made them look like an uncle and his niece.
“Now move that ice lump over here.”
Sera lifted the upright ice spear onto the launcher.
“Target the one in the middle.”
At Ho-yeong’s order, Shrakhim carefully aligned the firing angle.
“Fire!”
- Whoosh.
The ice spear shot forward with a crack that seemed to freeze the air itself, and pierced the center of a FogHog’s brow.
FogHog#002 has been slain. You gained 10 KP.
“First blood! Nice work, Shrakhim.”
They’d recorded the first kill since the stage began, but there was no time to celebrate it for long.
- Pfoog!
The rest of them flinched for only an instant at their comrade’s death, then kept advancing.
“Macdonaf, follow-up spell!”
“Cold Fragmentation!”
Macdonaf chanted the spell as instructed in advance.
Cracks began to spread through the ice spear embedded in the dead one’s forehead.
- Krajik.
The lower section of the ice pillar split apart.
The shards sprayed in all directions like broken glass and stabbed into the FogHogs’ bodies.
- Pfoogk!
But the fragments only hit the two beasts on either side of the dead one, and even then they did little real damage.
“They’re so massive they’re blocking all the shards. Still, the spear barely got through, so a few ice chips aren’t exactly going to be fatal.”
Ho-yeong had something else in mind.
“Cold Expansion!”
The remaining half of the ice pillar exploded, scattering fragments everywhere. If the first blast was like shattered glass, this one was like a storm of tiny glass beads.
- Pfoog?
The beads of ice reacted with the mana in the air and froze everything they touched.
- Po... go... ugh.
Even so, the FogHogs strained forward. But their pace was slower than a stroll. The two that had been hit by the first ice shards were even slower, frost seeping into them from the inside.
“Serves you right! You’ve all got disease resistance, poison resistance, magic resistance, a whole pile of resistances, but no immunity to cold, huh? Well, not that it’s exactly a weakness.”
Strictly speaking, they weren’t vulnerable to cold. Cold itself was not their weakness. Their thick fur and hides shielded them from it.
“But that’s when they’re in good shape.”
Right now they’d been wounded by the javelins and had already spent a fair bit of stamina.
- Pfo... gokk.
“Why don’t you blow that fancy breath of yours again?”
The FogHogs were trying the most effective countermeasure they had: releasing heat through their breath.
- Hsssht. Hshhhkkk.
But all that came out when they widened their nostrils was a pitiful thread of vapor. Even that froze into icicles.
They had already exhausted themselves by spewing out so much fog earlier.
“Hahaha. Look at that. Earlier you were blasting out like a steam locomotive, and now you’re worse than a kettle! Guess your immunity’s weakened, so watch out for a cold!”
The breath they exhaled had backfired and frozen their noses, their one glaring weakness and their main weapon besides.
“Macdonaf, excellent work!”
Macdonaf had drained a great deal of mana and was slumped on the ground, spent.
“Hah... huff... It really would have been hard to stop them with cold if they were in perfect condition.”
His mana stat was C-rank. Even with the concentrated mana water helping him, the strain of casting powerful spells back-to-back had been significant.
“The magic combo’s done, so it’s time for the physical damage combo. Wagon unit, have you rested enough? You still have plenty of stamina, right?!”
“We do!”
The spearmen shouted back in booming voices.
“Then prepare your javelins!”
“Yes, sir!”
There were still plenty of short spears left.
“Uncle, put me on the roof.”
“Ain’t that heavy?”
“If I carry them one by one, how long would that take?”
Sera, small in stature but blessed with impressive core strength, lifted a bundle of javelins, and Shrakhim carried them up to the roof.
“Begin maneuvering!”
- Mi-no-hog!
The Minocentaurs pushed the wagon with powerful force.
The soldiers, and even the Minocentaurs, weren’t any more resistant to the cold than anyone else, but the frost zone was concentrated only around the FogHogs, so it wasn’t a serious issue. They just had to throw spears from a distance.
“Javelins!”
This time they didn’t even need Macdonaf’s iron-condensation magic. The target was so massive and nearly motionless that there was no chance of missing.
- Kwajik.
The short spears plunged in like shattered ice, digging deeper into the frozen, stiffened hide than before.
- Pofgk!
“Ballista crew, prepare to fire again!”
“Yes!”
“Got it!”
Macdonaf’s mana was exhausted, so they couldn’t make any more ice spears, but that didn’t mean the ballista was useless now.
“Urrrgh!”
Shrakhim and Sera gathered the javelins, eight or nine at a time. Since they were solid lumps of metal with spearheads attached, not wooden shafts, they were extremely heavy.
“If I gather them all together with condensation magic...”
Macdonaf suggested between gasps for breath, but...
“Is there any need for that? Sera, you bind the front end. I’ll bind the back.”
Even Shrakhim tilted his head and got ropes ready.
“Your strength’s better than my magic, I guess...”
Seeing the thick ropes of muscle in their arms, each as sturdy as the ropes they were tightening, Macdonaf decided to devote himself quietly to mana recovery.
“Just like before, right?”
“What? Menchi-kas?”
“No, that’s not it... never mind. I’ll handle it myself. But hearing you talk about food is making me hungry too!”
There was a problem in that Shrakhim couldn’t understand Sera’s Gallian dialect, but the loading went smoothly enough.
“Minho, Eollugi. Turn the wagon left. Yes, a little more, a little more!”
Ho-yeong directed the wagon to turn so they could adjust the ballista’s firing angle.
Ability level increased! The level of the passive skill Communion, skill tree branch Remote Control, has risen from 1 to 2. You can now share some status-window functions such as coordinates and diagrams with your converted monsters.
“Ballista fire!”
With a pleasant chime, the bundle of short spears flew out. It missed the head by a hair and struck the shoulder instead.
“Damn it all!”
It wasn’t that Shrakhim’s aim was poor. He had been aiming precisely for the nose, but the target had turned its head, causing the shot to go wide.
Notice. The FogHogs who saw their comrade die instantly to the ice spear have become wary of projectile weapons.
Even so, the bundled spears hit hard, and the FogHog’s vitality dropped below half.
“Ugh...”
Shrakhim glanced sidelong at the distant turret. He was worried he might be scolded, but what weighed on him more was the fear that he had disappointed the Byeonbangbaek.
This is a disaster. I was so bold, telling him to leave the ballista to me... He must be thinking I couldn’t even hit that huge head of theirs. That has to be it.
“It’s fine. Well done, Shrakhim! You don’t have to kill them outright. It’s enough to disable them!”
But contrary to his worries, the Byeonbangbaek encouraged him instead.
“Y-yes, sir! I won’t miss on the next shot!”
Heartened by Ho-yeong’s booming praise, Shrakhim loaded up again.
“Hey, Minho and Eollugi. Turn us around again!”
Before that, he ordered the Minocentaurs...
- Mi-no-hog? (Why should I listen to you?)
- Mi-noom! (You coward, and you think you can order us around?)
The Minocentaurs vehemently refused. Their conversion level was high enough that they no longer hated humans, but the only one they truly pledged loyalty to was Ho-yeong.
Notice. Minocentaurs do not follow the orders of anyone whose strength stat is lower than their own.
“What is this, some kind of BlackWargreymon? Don’t worry, guys. Just listen to Shrakhim’s request. Looks like he’s got an idea.”
- Mi-no. Mi-nohoo. (Understood. If the lord commands it, we’ll obey.)
- Mi-noooom. (If he isn’t ordering us but asking, then we’ll do it.)
That left Ho-yeong with a fresh problem.
When you’re dealing with monsters that have strong pride and a strong sense of self, you’ve got to be careful. Letting Shrakhim look after the wagon and the Minocentaurs earlier must have rubbed them the wrong way.
Still, thanks to the good mediation, there was no immediate issue.
- Mi-nohog! (Well? Is that all right?)
“Y-yeah. Thanks.”
Shrakhim had his own way of thinking about it.
“This time I’ll aim for the belly. Even if those bastards can twist their necks, they won’t be able to move that huge gut of theirs.”
It had been that bulging belly that nearly got him eaten by the Hogliphon.
“Hoho, Uncle, you’re using your head more than I expected.”
“And wherever it hits, it’ll be fatal. Liver, lungs, heart, ribs, doesn’t matter. One good shot and they won’t stand it!”
“You keep talking about food from the start. You’re making me think of grilled griffin skewers.”
“...Do dwarves really eat things like that?”
Even while trading jokes, Sera and Shrakhim worked steadily through the loading process.
The ballista crew swung around to the FogHogs’ flank and fired their bundled javelins.
- Pfoogk...!
The bundled spears struck the heart perfectly.
FogHog#001 has been slain. You gained 10 KP.
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