Today's the day.

I need not even tell the guys to wake up, all of them were extremely excited and were already up and about. There were still last minute things to do though.

“Guys. We need to fetch king kong and his team here, get our equipments up to date to our levels and prepare some supplies I thought about yesterday that should help with this siege. Let's distribute the work.”

Xantos was now big enough to carry two of us on her back so Soup and Beathoven agreed to fly to Junad to get the armour and supplies. Breadtalk wanted to go fetch king kong and his army so I decided to let him. It would give me some time to read the book I got from the mines yesterday anyway. Thus we dissaminated into our new job scopes and agreed to meet back in town in 2 hours time.

While they were on their tasks, I quickly took out the book from our findings yesterday. “The Earth Goddess, Gaia.” Due to my fast reader skill I managed to finish it in one hour. The book talked about how gaia was the driving force of earth. Earth was created because of gaia's ability and anything on the land belongs to her. The book also mentioned her siblings, Chaos who was in charge of air, Erebus for darkness, Aether for Light, Pontus for Sea. This was very helpful towards my understanding of nature and mana as a whole. The book clearly defined Gaia's job as a primordial deity. She had to oversee the growth of lands, the growth of nature and the things she did to uphold the growth of earth without upsetting the balance of nature with her siblings. Through this book I understood more about the earth element in particular.

Elemental Affinity to Earth increased!

By finding a rare book which explains to you one of the primordial deities, Gaia, you were able to be enlightened about the true essence of Earth from its humble beginnings. The aspects of earth as a development of a universe is now in your knowledge.

Earth Affinity + additional 5%

So there were books like these which could increase elemental affinities as well. From the book I read, there should be at least 4 more books which were for wind, darkness, light and water. As for ice, fire and electricity, I'm not sure of that but I'm pretty sure there would be a specific book for each. Seeing that this was a rare book I knew I had to safekeep it.

Just after I have finished reading the book, Xantos, Soup and Beathoven came back. Soup had bought level 100 armours for all of us and they provided a ton more of defence and stat boosts than our current level 1 armours except for my chest armour made of cobra skin. I decided to leave the cobra skin armour on as the stats were comparable to the level 100 armour. While it lacked a bit in defence, it had higher poison and magic resistance which I thought would be more useful.

We heard a roar from the west side and sure enough, king kong and his army emerged from the forest. There were about a hundred of them which was surely not enough. They were weaker than skeletal soldiers as well but we needed all the manpower or in this case, apepower that we could get. However, Breadtalk was no where in sight.

“Where's Breadtalk?” I went up to the king kong to ask.

WHAM

I took a huge right cross in the face. Where the king kong stood now stood Breadtalk, laughing his ass off pointing at my shocked face.

“HAHAHAHA SUCKER PUNCHED IDIOT.”

All the gorillas laughed along and I could see another huge gorilla standing at the back of the entire pack instead.

“Divine judgement.”

Breadtalk's health went down by half a bar and he was no longer laughing.

“Alright guys! We hav- WHAT?”

A whole horde of people started coming into the village. I recognised some as the villagers over the past few days of staying here but majority of them were not familiar. They were all wearing robes of a church as well. And their numbers were not little. They numbered about 1000. A thousand holy priests, warriors, paladins and such had joined the army. But how?

“Thank me later you ass. Thanks for the burning sword stabbing into my skull man. Not pretty. They listen to me but I guess since you're the party leader they will listen to you too. Try not to let too many of them die okay if i return them stronger and there isn't too much of a drop in number I can get a reimbursement of the reputation points I spent for hiring them.”

Breadtalk was a lifesaver. At first the chances of raiding the castle was about 3% at best but now, we really had a decent shot at this. However, big groups were harder to lead and this would be a true strength of how I can get them to rally together for an important cause.

Even the village chief was aware of our preparations to settle this once and for all and he gave the whole village square which could not even fit everyone for me to speak to them. I decided to use my mana manipulation to create a second level platform around the entire square so just barely everyone could fit. The gorillas took the nearby trees and the villagers went to the roof of their huts. I had to address everyone here and make haste to raid the castle.

“People. All of you here are gathered for one cause and one cause only. To put an end to the dark forces residing in a castle up north which threatens the soverignty of this village. This village has already been in a state of shambles caused by these tyrants and we need to stop this once and for all. The forest has also been hunted by them and many lives have been lost. They seemingly just appeared here with a castle and even mining for resources with a nearby mine. If we let this go on, they will grow into a force that could threaten even more villages and maybe even a city if we give it long enough. Can I ask for all your help, to vanquish this evil foes so that we can restore peace to the surrounding villages and people.”

A thunderous roar greeted me from the villagers who wanted to rescue their village, the gorillas who wanted to seek revenge for their fallen as well as the followers of the church of Loki who wanted to do their part in exterminating evil.

I explained to them the plan. When we reach, everyone was to fight as a group of five with at least one healer in the group to maintain maximum efficiency. They had to break up and find their own groups. Upon reaching the outskirts of the castle walls, I would ask Breadtalk to shapeshift into a crow and scout the interior of the castle walls but outside of the building itself. Xantos would attract too much attention should there be enemy forces in the courtyard. The attack would be a diversion type mission. The main body would be fighting in the courtyard where I had a plan to implement to help them drag on the fight while the 5 of us would head straight into the castle to find the boss and finish it off.

The basic preparations were finally complete and it was around 10am. It was go time. We went towards the castle and put the plan into action. Breadtalk mapped out the interior of the castle which was fairly simple. It was entirely symmetrical so the whole compound was of a square shape. The courtyard was everything outside the building which was in the shape of another square. So it was like a rounded perimeter, something like a running track which the main body had to fight in. It was quite an expected layout so nothing was wrong there. Then there was the question of how to siege the castle. We could storm in by the front entrance or attempt to scale the walls. I decided on a mixture of both. I realised with mana manipulation that I could use an existing source of element and warp it with mana manipulation. This actually saves mana cost as usually I would have to provide both the shape and size of the mana as well as the element type but if there was lets say a fire that was already started, I could borrow the fire and just alter the shape and size of it, reducing the mana cost. Walls were made of earth so essentially, what I can make, what I can break down. Of course the limit was my mana pool and removing a dense wall of earth of a castle wall would already take about half my mana pool away if not I would have just chosen to destroy the entire castle right.

I made a hole in the wall and we streamed inside quickly and stealthily. There were guards patrolling the area but they were just normal skeletal warriors. We used Reunion and they all transferred their mana to me and I quickly used 4 divine judgements to exterminate the nearest guards before they could realise what is going on. It took about 5 minutes to get all the troops through one tiny hole in the wall which I've made larger and larger once my mana had regenerated enough of course and once they were all in, we could begin the sieging mission proper. Chaotic melody was played and we begun the diversion tactic. All of us charged towards the entrance of the castle, eliminating all the guards along the way and sure enough, I heard a bell sound which was no doubt the signal that they were under attack. Reinforcements would arrive any minute so speed was of the essence. The majority of the troops should reside within the castle so they should be coming out of the castle but my goal was never to let them make it out. Everything was going to happen inside the castle itself to make sure it was as messy as possible, making the chances of the diversion higher. We managed to rush into the castle doors and I found out that the doorway was huge. I wanted to use the hallway as a bottleneck like what we did in the mines but this hallway was easily two to three times bigger than that of the mine but since we also had more troops, I figured this would be okay. The most important part of the plan would be to get as many people fighting in the main hall or corridor as possible because everyone would be making their way there to fight and there was only one route people in the castle can take because their courtyard has been wiped out and all the troops were inside the castle. Everyone would be rushing down to the main hall and that was when we could start out diversion. From the top down.

I was sure werewolves and skeletal soldiers and maybe even higher level undead monsters would be coming down soon so I did the same thing as I did in the mines. I used earth to create a blockage from the top of the army so that the enemies could only come from one direction, head on. I expected more enemies in the courtyard but since that was not the case, I gave the army a new instruction. All front line soldiers are to be tanks or damage dealers and anyone that could even heal are to be behind and heal them up. This was the best way I could think of to get them to buy as much time as possible. Everything was in place and we begun our seperate mission, our own mission impossible.

The 5 of us ran outside and I used gravity magic to make all of us lighter. Xantos then took us all to the top of the castle. We readied ourselves. Breadtalk had gotten a 6 from Loki's Entourage so it was his poison daggers again. Soup used Gladiator's rage and was brandishing his new level 100 greatsword which looked alot more badass. Beathoven turned on chaotic melody and a buff that gave us more movement speed. Xantos also looked ready to go and I created a hole at the top of the castle, dropping us straight down into a huge room which I assumed was the lord of the castle's room. However, it was empty.

We ran our and saw that we were indeed at the top floor with only that one room where we came out from. We ran down the flight of stairs and saw some werewolves sprinting down the hallway down the stairs. The diversion was working. Everyone was heading down to join the fight. However usually the boss in this situation would be protected by bodyguards and not needed to join the fight himself. This whole plan was based on this likely scenario but what if the boss went to join the fight? I had no time to think as the longer we took, the lower the chance of success. From the top of the castle, we headed down, checking every room for signs of the boss. In the rooms sometimes there were skeletal soldiers and werewolves that were getting ready for the fight and gearing up and we made short work of them. We specialised in closed room fights anyway. The castle was kind of tall though and we had to make our way through many flights of stairs downwards. However with each room we checked our spirits went down a little. There was no boss to be seen anywhere.

We eventually managed to run the whole castle down from the top floor to the second floor where we could see the staircase was still filled with enemies who were stuck in a traffic jam, much like the scene that happened in the mines. We made sure every room was checked and there was still no sign of the boss despite the huge room at the top which looked like his chambers. However the forces was still holding up as there was still a jam so nothing made sense. I could only think of one exception. What if there was a secret way out from the castle to the courtyard or maybe even out of the castle? Our forces could possibly be backstabbed and that would become very bad. Sandwiched in between two armies was something that was very, very bad. We had no time to waste. Our forces was still holding up but if my prediction was right they would not hold up for much longer. I asked Xantos to fly out of the second floor window to check what is happening on the first floor. When Xantos returned however, she said that there was nothing wrong and the forces were still clogging up the main hall and stairs. They were hanging on but of course there were casualties. No backstab was going on.

Where is the goddamn boss?! Nothing makes sense here.

Seeing that we could not find the boss, the diversion mission has failed so we needed to quickly proceed with the best course of action. From the second floor, since they were not backstabbing us, we decided to backstab them instead. I used earth mana to conjure a wall directly behind the enemy back lines. I opened a hole big enough for just the 4 of us with Beathoven safely at the back for us to fight and we did our stuff.

The back of the enemy forces contained some of their most important people. The healers. Undead priests were busy at the back healing those in the front so we needed to cut them down fast. They were of quite a high level as well compared to the forces so we needed to make it quick. Skeletal warriors in the castle averaged to be about level 100, around our level while the ones we met outside were about level 80. I guess they really were on a training expedition. The werewolves were even stronger, about level 120 but with our crowd control mazing skills and superior regen and fight strategy, slowly but surely, we dwindled down their numbers steadily. With the enemies now fighting against two fronts, their strength was divided by half and our army could fare better against them as well.

The fight lasted for about an hour, before we could see no enemies approaching us from the earth wall and when we went down the staircase, there were bodies after bodies of enemies that were decimated but also bodies of our own comrades who had fallen in battle. However, the damages were not great. Out of about a thousand we brought, about 600 still lived. That was more than half and I estimate about twice as much enemy forces killed. However that still didn't explain the situation. Who was the one keeping all these forces in check? Surely a bunch of werewolves were not enough to organise an army of undead skeletal warriors to such a degree? And then I realised that all castles have one place more which could be gigantic but we have yet to check. It could function as a safe house from most attacks as well. The basement.

I asked the army to split up and look for signs of a basement and sure enough, after 10 minutes, someone found a doorway in the first floor that had a series of staircases leading down. We walked through it with the BOTs leading the way and surely enough a sizeable door was at the end of the descending stairs. However there were no guards guarding the door. Maybe the boss said he needed no protection and sent the guards to attack as well. Approaching the door, I could sense some sort of aura coming from the other side. It was a first. I could sense a dark aura, no doubt a strong one, and for the first time in my life in RR, I could feel fear. The sheer size of the aura which could be felt from behind a door is something I have never experienced before. What commanded the forces would no doubt lie behind this door. I told everyone about this and everyone went into battle mode. Apprehensively, I opened the door.

It was pure darkness and I had to cast flare to illuminate the basement. It was huge. It was easily as big as the main corridoor just that it was located one floor below and it was completely empty. Except for a hulking wolf at the back of the room, sitting in a golden throne with a crown on his head. He was not like a werewolf which was half wolf half humanoid. This was a fully overgrown wolf about the size of the king kong. However it had a part of it which was not covered in fur but just showing its ribcage and muscles. It was level 200 and its name had a crown beside it, signalling that it was indeed, a boss monster. The name read : “Renfir”

“To those that have come through those doors,

I give my words, you'll soon be on all fours.

Trying your best to crawl your way out,

while all the others scream and shout.” It spoke.

End of Chapter 13