Chapter 29.2 - Battle for Brandenburg 2 (Part 2)

We’ve been tricked!?Realizing her error in judgment, Irene bites her lip. The decoys’ aim wasn’t to turn this into a drawn-out battle.

“Were they aiming for Erase’s recasting time?!” Alexia shouts.

Essentially, the stronger a spell is, the longer its casting and recasting time tend to be. The spells Sages know have short casting times, but many have long recasting times, and Erase is no exception. The recasting delay is three minutes. During that time, Erase cannot be used.

Their miscalculation was that they didn’t realize that the griffins were more wary of Erase than they expected. The griffins measured the time between casts of Erase and even realized that Alexia is the only one who can use it.

“Everyone, I won’t be able to use Erase for a little while! Please keep the enemies from approaching!”

The counter-attacks towards the approaching griffins increase. Alexia also fights back with Mana Bolt, but they dodge it. Unable to do anything in this situation, she bites her lip.

This is one of the Sage’s weaknesses: Sages know few spells that can attack enemies directly. The spells Alexia uses most often are status ailment spells and Wisdom Burst, which she learned before becoming a Sage, as well as support spells, since learning those was her top priority after becoming a Sage. Status ailment spells aren’t immediately effective, so they can’t stop the griffins. Also, Erase is effective as an attack spell in this situation, but it wasn’t originally an attack spell. Furthermore, since she wants to improve as a Sage, she can’t afford to learn new attack spells.

Therefore, the only spells she knows that can directly deal damage are Mana Bolt and Wisdom Burst. However, since Wisdom Burst’s attack range is a sphere centered on Alexia, if the griffins figure out this attack range, it won’t be a threat to them. This means that her only means of attack is Mana Bolt. Mana Bolt, which can only attack in a straight line, has a higher attack rate compared to Erase, but its accuracy is the problem.

Even so, Alexia’s support spells are still effective. Alexia’s attacks aren’t the only ones the griffins have to worry about. The closer they get to the attacks of the soldiers around her, the easier they are to hit and the more their numbers decrease. But that isn’t all there is to the griffins’ plan.

“They’re launching suicide attacks and using their fallen allies as shields?!”

Deftly grabbing the corpses of their allies who lost their lives to an attack and using them as shields, they protect their allies further back and take fewer hits. The defending soldiers are left shaken at how the griffins take action without fear of death.

“Don’t falter! Shoot them down!” Irene appeals, but their agitation won’t settle immediately once it has spread. Taking advantage of that moment of weakness, the griffins reach the city walls. To be more accurate, they reach the side of the wall, where Alexia and the others are standing on the footholds. The griffins hurtle themselves towards the wall, and in exchange for sacrificing most of the griffins’ lives, their suicide attack is successful. The wall collapses in the explosion.

“Lady Alexia!”

Shaken by the explosion, Irene immediately embraces Alexia. Then, the soldiers who were fighting atop the wall are engulfed by its collapse.

***

Her body complaining of pain, Alexia regains consciousness. Opening her eyes a bit, she finds her chamberlain lying on the ground lifelessly.

“..! Irene!” Alexia fearfully cries out in tears as she shakes Irene.

“Agh! ..Lady Alexia! Are you alright?!” Irene says as she opens her eyes, grimacing in pain.

“You protected me right away, so I have no injuries. However..”

Fortunately, neither of them have any serious injuries, and not much time has passed since they lost consciousness. Most likely, the effect of Alexia’s Wisdom Shield lessened the impact. Although the soldiers that were inside the Wisdom Shield haven’t regained consciousness, their wounds are shallow. However, soldiers caught in collapses elsewhere are in a ghastly state. Seeing a soldier with his eyes and mouth opened wide, his body crushed by rubble from the neck down, Alexia averts her gaze. There’s a suffocating stench of blood in the air around her.

Faced with the reality that she wasn’t able to protect them despite her desperate efforts, Alexia’s heart is filled with regret. However, as this is a battlefield, there’s no time to spare for even a moment of remorse.

Suddenly, there’s a violent tremor, and Alexia, trying to figure out what’s happening, looks through a crack in the wall debris to find a cloud of dust being kicked up by something enormous coming towards them. Because the city walls were breached, huge monsters are advancing towards the opening. The soldiers that couldn’t ascend the walls (since not all of the 2500 soldiers were able to defend the walls, they were on standby in case the wall was breached) and the soldiers who came down from the walls that weren’t destroyed all gather together.

The Battle for Brandenburg is about to enter a new phase.

***

The greatest trial that students face before summer vacation is probably midterm exams. Midterm exams, which could cause you to see either heaven or h**l depending on the exam results, are without a doubt a great ordeal for students. As is standard, if you get a failing grade at our school, you have to take supplementary classes for that subject over summer vacation, so if you want to enjoy a peaceful summer vacation, you have to avoid getting even a single failing grade.

That said, even I’m pretty disgusted with myself for having such low aspirations for my own grades that I’d rather aim to just avoid failing than try to get good grades, playing games online until the very last minute. Although, I did restrain myself during the exam period. As for the results, well.. I probably did fine. After finishing my exams and casually comparing answers with my friends, I went home filled with a sense of freedom.

Booting up my computer for the first time in a while, I look through the Another World threads on an online game forum. Since not a single one of my IRL friends plays Another World, I have no choice but to get information about the game by looking it up online. Currently, the popular topic on the forum is Commune. I’m planning on going to Commune when the official release starts, so I look through it out of curiosity.

What happened was that a new type of monster which hadn’t existed in Commune began to appear in large numbers. At first, it seemed like it was just a new monster that got added to the area, but the monster discovery reports increased and there were even unconfirmed new monsters discovered. Various theories and rumors were being passed around regarding why they were only increasing in Commune and what exactly was happening. There was even a rumor going around that there was a bug where a large number of monsters would disappear right in front of the player even though the player didn’t defeat them. It was uncertain whether the rumor was true or not, but during this situation, it stirred things up even more. The admins posted an interesting article on the main page of the official site.

“Something is happening in Commune?!”

This official announcement which said that the details would be disclosed at a later date caused yet another debate. After reading this article, players had a premonition that this may be an announcement for a large-scale, limited-time event.

In MMORPGs, there are sometimes large-scale events that occur for a limited time. For example, during the Christmas season, the whole city would be covered in Christmas decorations for a Christmas event, monsters would drop items that you can only obtain during the event, and you’d be able to see scenes that are different from usual throughout the entire game.

The fact that the information won’t be released until a bit later after the open beta ends must mean that it’s an advance notice of a large-scale event that will occur once the official release starts. If so, then I definitely have to go to Commune for the official release.

Since I started out in Castal Kingdom for the closed beta and in the Weichsel Empire for the open beta, I was thinking of starting at the Allied Commune for the official release, which is why I invited Alexia and Irene there. It’d be great if they both came to Commune with me.

It’s already been more than a month since I started playing with them. At this point, I think I could confidently declare them to be my friends. That may be presumptuous of me, but at the very least, they don’t hate me. This is the first time I’ve made internet-only friends in a game like this. If possible, I’d like to continue playing with them.

The open beta ends today, so I have to make sure to tell them the meeting place in Commune. It’d be great if I could just friend them, but if we friend each other now, our character data will just get deleted when the official release starts. Since it’s such a big game world, if we don’t decide on a meeting place, we may never be able to find each other again. Well, maybe we could meet up at the Adventurer’s Guild in Commune.

Now, I’ll log into the game.

Last time, I logged out near the southern entrance to Brandenburg, so I’m supposed to start there when I log in, but.. Maybe there was a mistake. When I log in, I’m in a crowd of people. What’s up with this crowd? When I look closely, it’s some sort of line and I can’t see the end of it, so with this many people, they’re definitely not players, which means they’re probably all NPCs. Apparently, I got involved in some sort of large-scale event. I haven’t heard anything about this, though.

By the way, as you may know, in most MMOs, there’s no collision detection with NPCs and other players, which means you can pass through them so they don’t get in the way of traffic. In Another World, though, there’s collision detection, so I can’t just ignore the crowd and pass through it. In other words, I was swallowed up by the crowd, pushed forward by the waves of people and unable to escape.

H- huh? This doesn’t look like I’m inside the city. It’s like they’re leaving the city. Where the heck are they going? I mean, I have plans with someone! I’ve gotta hurry and get out of here! Let me out! Let me outta here!!