Drones (4)
"No!"
Everything had seemed to be going so smoothly. Under the Head Mod's meticulous direction, the vast majority of the lurking beasts had been ferreted out and slain. In what had felt like a hopeless impasse, the Head Mod had become their eyes. Hope had steadily blossomed that they might truly reclaim the sacred tree—until that very moment.
Boom!
Right before the giant mutant frog, the drone blew apart into scrap. The Wave had begun in earnest.
"Ah, no..."
They had lost the drone. The elves' only eyes in the sky were gone. Though paralyzed with dismay at the sight, the elven archers managed to snap back to their senses with admirable discipline. In unison, they drew their bowstrings taut, loosing volleys of arrows at the abominations crawling out from the rift. Striking while the monsters were at their most exposed and vulnerable was their final, desperate gamble.
Ping!
"Huh?"
Their hopes shattered as the arrows struck a shimmering, translucent barrier and clattered limply to the ground.
"Melang, use magic!" Eliana barked at her dazed vice-commander.
Melang, a knight well-versed in sorcery, unleashed an offensive spell almost immediately, but—
Kaaa-boom!
"M-magic doesn't work either!"
Beneath that crystalline dome, even high-tier magic proved utterly useless. The barrier was woven from the immense stores of elven mana the mist had been siphoning all along. Attacking was impossible, and seeing through it was completely out of the question.
"What... what do we do...?"
Just as Eliana's mind was going completely blank with terror—
Bzzzzzz.
From overhead came an oddly familiar whir of mechanical wings. When Eliana snapped her head around, something identical to the Head Mod's familiar from moments ago was hovering steadily in the air.
"Wait, what?"
Hadn't it just exploded into bits?
Drones are cheap.
Even better, they're dirt cheap and perform remarkably well. They feel no fear, and controlling them is a total breeze. There's a damn good reason modern militaries deploy swarms of drones instead of risking human lives.
Piloting the replacement drone, I closed in on the World Tree once more.
Gurgle-croak!
The colossal mutant beast lashed out with its tongue, but I wasn't falling for the same trick twice.
"Too slow."
Now that I'd gotten the hang of drone flight, dodging a predictable linear strike was child's play.
31.
32.
Attacking the mutant beast directly was impossible because of that impervious barrier. For the moment, I kept marking the coordinates of every standard monster scuttling nearby. Thanks to that reconnaissance, the elves managed to wipe out the bulk of the minions, but overall progress ground to a dead halt.
"In the end, we have to kill that bastard."
Without bringing down the mutant beast acting as the Wave's field boss, this catastrophe wouldn't end. The real problem was time.
Even in mortal warfare, there is usually such a thing as a stalemate. But ever since that mutant beast took the field, stalemates ceased to exist. Using the hollowed-out sacred tree as its incubator, it churned out an unending deluge of fog with nowhere to evade it. The miasma swelled larger by the minute, expanding as if ready to swallow the entire Elad Forest whole.
Eladrien sat concealed within the deep, verdant heart of the forest. With narrow access routes and abundant ambush points, it was naturally an impregnable elven redoubt. But the insidious mist neutralized every single tactical advantage. Helpless against its suffocating creep, the defenders had no choice but to pull back, surrendering the city entrance in the blink of an eye.
They did possess the landmines and firearms I had handed over during the Great Elad Invasion, but even those posed a dilemma. At best, guns could only buy a brief reprieve against the unending swarm.
[Sticker: Elf giving a brave thumbs-up]
In the end, closing the distance was their only option. Mutant beast or magical shield, nothing remained invulnerable before point-blank ballistic fire. Unsealing the firearms they had hoarded as their ultimate trump card, an elite strike force of elven knights mobilized.
A desperate vanguard embarked on what amounted to a suicide mission, stepping past the veil into the suffocating fog. At their forefront stood my slave—er, Assistant Moderator, Full-Health Elf.
Watching the elves vanish into the thick mist on the monitor, I rose from my chair. Walking over to the corner of the bunker, I broke into a grin as I unhurriedly began slicing open the mountain of parcels stacked against the wall.
"Right then. Time to do my job."
As the cardboard flaps opened, a multitude of drones revealed themselves. In both size and silhouette, they were a far cry from the scouting quadcopters I'd been flying earlier. These were purpose-built machines engineered from the ground up to carry heavy payloads.
"High time we see what kamikaze drones can do."
Not knowing which would suit the job best, I'd simply ordered a bit of everything—from purpose-built loitering munitions to standard heavy-lift drones rigged with external explosives. That was the terrifying truth about modern drone warfare. As long as the rotors could lift the weight, any drone could be turned into a precision guided bomb. All you had to do was strap on a warhead.
Grabbed this screenshot from the stream, but no matter how I look at it, it's over for them...
Shit, I know we all meme about hating elves, but seeing this actually feels bad man.
Glancing over the real-time posts flooding the forum, I steadily hoisted the drone up into my hands.
Items have been safely delivered to the destination!
"All right. Let's roll."
It was time to see what these babies were made of.
"Shh. Wait here."
Eliana dropped low, concealing herself behind the splintered trunk of a fallen tree. The elves trailing behind her held their breath, their fingers white-knuckled around longswords and rifles. Peeking out cautiously, Eliana fixed her gaze upon the mutant beast entrenched near the sacred tree.
The Head Mod's sorcery will surely pierce it, but...
The problem was landing a clean shot. Countless frog-like monsters encircled the alpha in layered formations, forming an impenetrable living wall. If they fired, the minions would gladly throw themselves into the line of fire. Having witnessed the guns' lethality firsthand, she knew they packed terrifying penetrative force, but their damage was strictly single-target.
Thus, Eliana's battle plan was straightforward.
"While the vanguard cleaves through the front ranks, aim straight for the mutant beast and fire."
"...Understood!"
It was a suicidal frontal assault. On top of their rifles, she had requisitioned several fragmentation grenades from the Head Mod, intending to thrust them directly against the mutant beast's hide as a desperate, final sacrifice. Yet every elf present was painfully aware of the truth.
Even if, by some miracle of the gods, we manage to slay the beast...
The mist would not dissipate immediately. Right now, they were holding onto consciousness purely by burning their precious mana, but once their reserves hit zero, the magical slumber would claim them. Collapsing defenseless in the dead center of enemy territory meant certain death.
"We have to do this."
There was simply no other way. Nor was there time left to hesitate. Even at this very second, the insidious fog was sinking its claws into the heart of Eladrien.
Taking a sharp breath to steady her racing heart, Eliana lunged from behind the shattered tree.
"Now!"
At her battle cry, the elven knights burst from cover.
Bang!
Rifles roared almost in unison, but the result was bitterly disappointing.
Gurgle!
The lesser monsters shielding their alpha readily intercepted the bullets with their own bodies, slumping to the ground as fresh meat shields.
"Do not stop!"
Eliana hurled a grenade into the densest cluster of incoming beasts.
KRA-BOOM!
Tracing an elegant arc through the air, the explosive detonated, obliterating the surrounding monsters into scorched ash. But it was far from enough.
Gurgle...
Croaaak...
Fresh waves of monsters surged forward to instantly plug the crater. From the very beginning, the beasts spawned in this Wave had not scattered to ravage the kingdom; they had built a fortress around the mutant alpha, existing purely to throw their lives away for its defense.
Slash! Cleave!
With every passing heartbeat, their mana leaked out like sand through an hourglass. Moving with acrobatic finesse that bordered on the miraculous, Eliana severed monster after monster down the middle. The knights behind her pushed furiously forward, closing the distance to the mutant, but that was where their advance stalled.
"Commander, ahead...!"
"Ngh...!"
Using their overwhelming mass, the monsters had erected a towering biological rampart of writhing flesh. Their vanguard was brought to a standstill far sooner than anticipated.
There's nowhere to break through.
Eliana's thoughts raced in the choking fog and gore. Yet everywhere she turned, wall-to-wall abominations blocked the light. It was in that moment of frantic desperation that disaster struck.
"Aaargh!"
"Commander!"
The heads of the monsters directly in front of her suddenly detonated outward. Before anyone could process the shock, the mutant beast's tongue slashed through the bloody gap like a colossal bladed whip. The creature had sacrificed its own minions to launch a surprise strike through their ranks.
The razor-sharp tongue tore across Eliana's leg, dropping her violently onto the blood-soaked soil.
"Khh, aagh...!"
Blood poured down her leg. Gritting her teeth so hard they cracked, she planted her blade into the dirt to prop herself up, but that was all she could manage. Through the gaping wound, her mana hemorrhaged at a dizzying rate, and the ambient mist pressed in, thicker and darker than ever.
Is this... how I die?
Wherever she looked, only horrific ruin awaited. As the chill of impending death cast its shadow over her, the composed mask of the knight commander crumbled into pallid despair.
Bzzzzzz.
"Huh?"
A quiet, mechanical hum of whirring rotors drifted through the damp air.
The drone, which should have been high above the canopy, had somehow glided down right beside her.
"The steel fairy...?"
No, its silhouette was distinctly different. It was significantly bulkier, with heavy, streamlined cannisters strapped securely beneath its carbon-fiber chassis.
Drifting effortlessly past the kneeling elves, it accelerated straight toward the mutant beast.
Gurgle-croak!
The mutant beast reacted with violent alarm to the incoming machine. Every single wave, great and small, had been utterly dismantled by that cursed Head Mod. In fact, hadn't that tiny flying metal insect nearly neutralized the entire crisis before the Wave could even fully form? Though it seemed to be nothing more than a frail scouting contraption, the beast was not taking any chances.
CRACK!
Lashing through the air with terrifying velocity, the frog's whip-like tongue speared straight through the drone's center.
Yet that was its fatal blunder.
Just as Eliana's face was about to twist in heartbreak at the destruction of yet another drone—
> Head Mod*: Whatever you do, do NOT duck to avoid the blast.
A message materialized directly before her retinas.
"Do not...?"
Eliana blinked in stunned silence for a fraction of a second, then immediately threw herself face-first into the mud.
"Get down!"
"!"
At her desperate scream, every battle-hardened elven knight dropped flat against the earth.
In that very heartbeat, a blinding brilliance flared from the impaled drone.
A momentary, white-hot pulse of solar fury—
KABOOOOOOOM!!!
An earth-shattering roar detonated through the forest, shaking the very foundations of the world.