As I dodge the lion's attacks I move around it looking for a weakness I can use. But since it is made of stone I can't find one, so I start paying attention to the mana moving around inside it. Feeling a sudden surge of mana towards the thing's eyes I look at them and see they are glowing brightly. Before I can even think about reacting, the glow suddenly turns into a beam and hits me in the side.

You have suffered a fire attack! Damage 307 HP!

HP remaining: 3971!

'What the hell!? They shoot laser beams from their eyes?!?'

While the damage isn't too bad that is probably because I have a decent amount of fire resistance. The problem is the beam was way too fast to try and dodge it, so if it keeps using that ability it can just wear me down. Trying to think of how to beat this thing I can't help but regret giving up all my other weapons, a hammer would be perfect right now.

My skills with the sword are great and all but a sword doesn't work for every situation. The Supreme Swordsmanship style while pretty awesome just doesn't seem worth losing all other weapons. Especially since I haven't even been able to finish learning it due to lack of time.

Maybe I should wait until I see if it works with a naginata before I make a decision. After all, the middle of a fight is not the place to be thinking about this, I need to focus. Just as I think that I see the statue's eyes light up again so I throw myself to the side. Unfortunately its eyes simply track my movement and hit me as I am moving.

You have suffered a fire attack! Damage 311 HP!

HP remaining: 3660!

'If I am taking three hundred damage with seventy percent fire resist, that means it is doing over a thousand damage per attack!'

As I am getting back to my feet the statue turns and returns to its pedestal. Then it moves towards Bones who is still fighting the other one, so I move quickly to intercept it. As I charge at it I drop Blitz down by my side ready to thrust, since a slash didn't do much, maybe pierce will.

While it doesn't seem to do much damage when I hit it, it does knock it over. Seeing it get up quickly I grab Bones and pull him back until we are at the start of the bridge. Once we cross a certain point the lions stop chasing after us and return to their pedestals.

Seems they are defensive and once we leave their area they return to standby mode. Bones of course wants to go back to fighting but I stop him and check on Kechara. When she sees me she jumps into my arms and starts rubbing her face against mine, guess she was worried.

Deciding it is probably best to avoid the lions I lead the way and we start walking along the city wall. I am hoping to find a spot where we can get into the city without having to fight the defenses. I didn't pay too much attention to the wall when we circled the lake but I do remember there being four bridges that were collapsed.

So it stands to reason that there are four gates, maybe one of them will have broken down enough that the defenses won't activate. As we walk I see several places where the wall has been damaged, but not enough for us to get through. If nothing else I might be able to jump up or climb the wall, but I can feel mana in the wall meaning it might have defenses as well.

When we reach the next gate, which I think is the west gate, I see another pair of statues. These are gorillas instead of lions but even from a distance I can feel the mana lying dormant in them. Deciding to keep looking we walk past the gate and continue following the wall.

Thanks to my regen my health is fully recovered by now, but my armor has two holes in it from where the lasers hit me. Now that I can manipulate mana again I am thinking that I need to enchant my armor. At least enough so that it can repair itself, I don't want to have to keep going back to Walter for him to fix it.

As we come around to the north side of the island I stop in shock, the north gate isn't there. The gate along with a good chunk of the wall are missing and instead there is a huge crater. All the buildings I can see that would have been behind the gate are nothing but piles of rubble.

'What the hell happened here?!'

It is starting to look like this city isn't in ruins because of age, but because it fell to an invader. As I look around I wonder if this crater is the result of the statues blowing up, if so I'm glad I wasn't able to destroy one. Even with my health and resistances I doubt I could survive an explosion that would create a crater this big.

The crater is at least a hundred feet across and twenty feet deep, yet looking around I can't find any debris. Meaning the stones that made up the gate and the wall were vaporized, or thrown so far I can't spot them. Either way it must have been a huge blast, but at least now I have a way into the city without fighting the statues.

Edging around the crater we manage to pass the walls and enter the city without triggering any more defenses. Once past the walls we can see the destruction is not limited to near the gate, this quarter of the city is basically rubble. If the explosion didn't kill off all the attackers they would have been able to enter without much opposition.

What surprises me is I don't see any fallen weapons or armor, if there was a battle here I would expect some signs to remain. Unless the invaders were wiped out and the inhabitants cleaned up before abandoning the city. I am hoping I can find the answer further into the city, so we start to make our way towards the center.