Lich for Hire

Chapter 227: We've Won!

Four massive meteors came crashing down through the night sky.

At the sight of such overwhelming power, even the Silvermoon Knight widened his eyes.

This was a genuine ninth-tier spell, Meteor Shower. The dragon rider really was an evocation specialist. The enhanced Ice Storm earlier had also been an evocation spell.

Evokers specialized in destructive magic. Fireball was their bread and butter, and Meteor Shower their signature spell.

And mages who specialized in this branch also possessed the ridiculous ability of nullifying friendly fire.

Evokers could carve out a protected space as part of their spells and ensure that their allies would take no damage from them.

In other words, they could unleash large-scale magic freely, without ever worrying about friendly fire.

The four meteors descended. Even the Silvermoon Knight couldn't stop the spell. His blade might split a meteor in two, but he couldn't prevent it from falling. If anything, shattering it in midair would only make the resulting rain of destruction even worse.

Four thunderous impacts followed. Three meteors missed, crashing far into the desert and sending shockwaves that hurled over a hundred soldiers into the air. But the fourth struck the Lyon formation dead center.

The explosion that followed was devastating. Hundreds of Lyon soldiers died instantly. The number of wounded was incalculable.Meteor Shower was simply too overwhelming. Ordinary soldiers had no way to resist it. No matter how many defensive buffs they carried, they would still be crushed beneath the impact and reduced to ash.

The casualties from this single spell had exceeded Lyon's losses over the entire year.

Ambrose, floating high above the battlefield, frowned. He hadn't been all that satisfied with the spell. Without the guidance of his dice of fate, only one of the four meteors had landed properly. No wonder Meteor Shower was sometimes considered the worst ninth-tier spell: its accuracy was atrocious. In a duel, it would be practically useless.

But that didn't matter. Ambrose had no intention of stopping. With a casual tap on the armrest of the Golden Throne, a mass of dark clouds gathered. A torrential downpour drenched the Lyon army to the bone.

The Silvermoon Knight ignored the rain soaking through his armor and shouted, "Raise the defensive barrier!"

The light priests, who had been tending to the wounded, immediately abandoned their tasks. Their holy power linked together, forming a massive radiant barrier over the formation.

Just as the barrier was completed, lightning rained down from the sky. But every bolt was absorbed by the barrier, its violent energy harmlessly redirected into the sands below.

Ambrose couldn't help but nod in admiration.

This kind of large-scale coordinated casting wasn't something just any army could pull off. It required not only shared power, but also long-term discipline and training.

In the entirety of the Ragetide Kingdom, barely a thousand people could manage combined casting, and even then, only with significant preparation.

Yet Lyon had multiple legions capable of doing it on command.

"Sharp instincts," Ambrose remarked. "He knew the barrier wouldn't stop Meteor Shower, so he didn't use it earlier. It was perfectly timed."

Lightning and meteors worked in entirely different ways. The Silvermoon Knight clearly understood magic and was able to respond accordingly.

"But let's see how long you can keep this up."

Just as Ambrose prepared to cast again, four streaks of light shot up from the Lyon army, rushing toward him.

Lyon's legendary paladins had finally made their move.

Faced with this formation, Ambrose had only one real option: to flee.

Before they could break through the cloud cover, he dismissed the Golden Throne and pulled a massive cannon-like device from his extradimensional space, which he strapped to his back.

"Let's test out rocket propulsion…"

He flipped a switch. The device hummed to life, and a violent gale burst from its rear. A powerful force seized Ambrose, dragging him rapidly into the sky.

The design had come from one of Alkhemia's blueprints. Magitech cannons used compressed wind to accelerate projectiles. With some modification, the same principle could produce sustained thrust.

Flight spells were limited to around fifty or sixty kilometers per hour. With this device, Ambrose estimated that he was nearing three hundred.

Alchemists had thought of this idea before, of course. The problem was, no human could survive this form of travel. Flying at such speeds without protection would flay a person alive in minutes.

Even with armor, the danger was extreme. The fatality rate would easily exceed seventy percent. With teleportation magic readily available, no one bothered pursuing such a reckless method of transportation.

But Ambrose's body was forged from mithril. As a lich, he had a phylactery as insurance. He could afford the risk.

The paladins gave chase, spreading out to surround him from multiple angles.

But before they could close in on him, Ambrose vanished far faster than anticipated.

"What is that thing?!"

The Silvermoon Knight stared at the streak of white turbulence cutting across the night sky, stunned.

He was no stranger to magic, but this was beyond anything he had ever seen. What kind of absurd contraption was that?!

They could only watch as the distance widened, no matter how hard they tried to catch up.

The Silvermoon Knight had charged up another strike, but even that might not reach him in time.

A nearby legendary paladin asked, "General, what now?"

"We… pursue him. That device can't sustain flight forever."

His goal was simple: to stop Ambrose from casting more large-scale spells. Whether he fled or not didn't matter.

Then, a distant explosion echoed. The source of the white turbulence suddenly burst apart like fireworks in the sky.

The Silvermoon Knight gaped. He had hoped that it would fail sooner or later, but this was even sooner than he had anticipated.

"After him!" he roared.

This was their chance. Killing the mage outright was far better than merely driving him off.

The paladins immediately gave chase, burning through their teleportation scrolls.

None of them had anticipated that they would ever spend these life-saving scrolls, worth their weight in gold, in pursuit of an enemy.

Meanwhile, Ambrose floated in midair, dazed.

The explosion had left his soul ringing.

He knew his improvised engine wasn't reliable, but he hadn't expected it to fail after barely a minute. Thankfully, his mithril body held together. A living person would have been torn to pieces.

As he recovered, he saw flashes of holy light blinking toward him.

Teleportation. "Lavish, aren't they? Lyon really is rich," he muttered.

He opened his extradimensional space again and pulled out a second jet engine, which he strapped to his back.

"Let's try again. No way this one lasts fewer than two minutes."

He flipped the switch and vanished once more in a streak of air.

The pursuing paladins came to an awkward halt.

The Silvermoon Knight gripped his sword so tightly his knuckles turned white. For a moment, he seriously suspected the explosion had been intentional, a ploy to bait them into wasting their scrolls.

"We'll cut our losses here," he said at last. "He understands us too well. He has contingencies for everything we do."

There was no point continuing the chase. The battlefield below mattered more.

And besides, Ambrose had flown off far enough. He wouldn't be able to harry Lyon's army before the Silvermoon Knight's next strike.

The Silvermoon Knight descended toward the ground, closing in on the brightly lit Sweetdew City.

As he had predicted, Ambrose was too far away to interfere.

Hovering above the city, the Silvermoon Knight drew his sword.

An indescribable radiance gathered along its edge.

He raised it high, then brought it down.

The blade released a wave of holy light, like flowing moonlight. At first, it was only the size of a man, but as it descended, it expanded rapidly until it dwarfed the entire city.

The devastating strike cleaved through the shattered frontline defenses, carving a trench deeper than anything the celestial warrior had left behind. It continued forward, slamming into Sweetdew City's walls.

With a single stroke, the entire city was split in two.

The explosion that followed tore straight through its heart, blasting a passage clean across the city.

The Silvermoon Knight was satisfied. With such a breach, nothing could stop Lyon's army from taking the city.

But just as he prepared to give the order to advance, the city before him shattered like glass. It broke apart into countless fragments of light, dissolving into the desert sands.

By the time the special effects faded, there remained nothing but golden sand.

"…An illusion?!"

The Silvermoon Knight felt his chest seize. The full-force strike he had painstakingly unleashed had hit nothing but a mirage.

How could Sweetdew City have been an illusion? How could anyone create an illusion of this scale?

Even legendary mages couldn't achieve such a feat!

His vision darkened. He coughed up a mouthful of blood and fell from the sky.

The surrounding paladins panicked. Forget the battle—they immediately caught him and retreated.

Sweetdew City didn't matter; the Silvermoon Knight did. If anything happened to him, the empire would suffer a far greater loss.

Ambrose returned just in time to witness the Lyon army withdraw in full. Unable to hold back his excitement, he shouted, "We've won!"

They had successfully held the city against the overwhelming threat of the Silvermoon Knight.