~In Procell’s crystal room~
A teardrop-shaped slime was watching the crystal.
“Pyufufufufu, it looks like the enemy army is rubbish. Why are they blindly charging forward? Are they brainless creatures? …haa, if my Demon Lord was here, he’d retort: aren’t you technically brainless yourself? Haa… how lonely.”
It has been 30 minutes since the official start of the [War].
Yet, the [Tree] Demon Lord’s forces were still in the first dungeon room of the very first floor of the [Creation] dungeon.
The room in question was the straightforward stone corridor. Its width and its height were at the absolute minimum allowed, which was 4 meters. That just enough to fit two Mithril Golems. As for its length, it had 2 kilometers.
There was no obstacle or anything that could be used as cover from end to end.
It was only noticeable if one stopped and carefully examined the room, but there was a very slight slope from the entrance.
All of these details had a purpose.
“Go, go, Mithril Golems, go!”
Golems, which could be aptly described as massive, were raining down death while the flashing of their weapons illuminated their mithril body.
Their weapons were called a gun. Not any ordinary gun that could be carried by foot soldiers, but ones that could be categorized as heavy machineguns. These were so monstrously heavy that it had to be mounted to a combat vehicle or have a stand to be wielded properly by human soldiers.
Rorono had taken the M2 Browning heavy machinegun and improved it. It was now even bigger than before. Moreover, from using 12.7mm bullets, it now employed 20mm bullets. Of course, its firepower was increased way beyond the base model, yet surprisingly, its rapid-fire capabilities, its durability, and its accuracy were also improved.
Additionally, there was a cable that connected the weapon to the Mithril Golem’s core. Through this cable, magic power generated by the core could be fed directly to the weapon and be used to increase the speed of the bullets even more.
Unlike Avalon-Ritters, Mithril Golems were only comparable to B rank monsters at best. However, that was in terms of overall performance. If speaking of only power, a Mithril Golem could be compared to an A rank monster.
Now, imagine adding that power to the power of a heavy machinegun…
“It’s super effective! That enemy might be an A rank, but look at it get torn to shreds!”
Each bullet was comparable to an all-out attack by an A rank monster. Yet, there were almost a thousand of those attacks coming each minute.
A high-rank monster might be able to endure a couple of bullets, but even they couldn’t stay in the storm of bullets for long.
That didn’t stop the enemies from trying and trying though.
There appeared some seemingly A rank monsters and they made a wall of wind with magic. The wall of wind stopped the first bullet that made contact; got weakened already by the second bullet; and got fully dispersed by the third. On the fourth bullet, that monster got a fatal wound. And on the fifth onward, the monster got slaughtered and torn to shreds.
All of this happened within a fraction of a second.
By the way, this latest iteration of the golems’ weapon was called the EDJ-04 Aymr. It was named after the weapon of a certain storm god.
Hopefully, it would be like its namesake and drive away our enemies.
“Pyufufufufu, simple is best!”
In order to make it to the next room, the enemies had little choice but to brave the storm of bullets.
As mentioned before, the width of the first dungeon room was just enough to fit two Mithril Golems. So, having those two golems fire their weapons side by side would leave not much space to dodge. The enemies could try going above, but because the room had the same width and height, that course of action would likely lead to the same result.
One thing that the Aymr didn’t improve much over the M2 Browning was its effective range. If the dungeon room had a perfectly leveled ground, the Aymr’s bullets would be dragged down to the ground before reaching the other end.
So, to make the bullets reach the other end without shortening the length of the room, an almost unnoticeable slope was implemented. And because it was hard to notice there was even a slope, there was the benefit of making enemies miscalculate their long-range attacks against the golems. If ever they noticed, well, the shot would still be harder to make when compared to an even plane.
The lack of cover, the tight space, the long distance, and the Aymr made the entire dungeon room a kill zone.
This was Avalon’s staple defense. Procell had been using it since the beginning.
If an enemy couldn’t even clear this room, it wasn’t a fight at all.
Of course, in Procell’s world, not only was the information about this room widespread already, so were the countermeasures.
Unfortunately for the [Tree] Demon Lord though, neither he nor any of the Demon Lords of his world knew of the room, much less how to counter it.
In other words, even by conservative estimates, this kill zone would not be put to an end any time soon. If anything, based on the successive useless deaths, clearing the dungeon room might not even be possible.
Known or not though, there were limitations that would soon become apparent.
Firstly, there was no way that the Mithril Golems could use the Aymr like this indefinitely. To be accurate, 22 minutes was the limit. To remedy this, there were 20 spare Mithril Golems waiting by the entrance of the next room. There were also plenty of spare Aymrs.
Ammunitions were limited, but then again, by the time the 128,000 bullets within Ciel were used up, either all the Aymrs had broken down or the [War] itself has ended.
“Pyufuu. How long are you going to let your troops die in vain? Their commander’s a fool. Ah, wait, have they finally smartened up?”
The [Tree] Demon Lord’s monsters evacuated. And then, after some time, some elite-looking monsters entered the room one after the other.
Ciel observed it all. She wasn’t simply watching; she was also observing through all sorts of appraisal and analysis skills.
Moreover, even though she was in the first room, she was also still in the crystal room.
This was possible because of her skill [Split]. It allowed her to make splinters of herself that had access to all her skills. It wasn’t really useful for her own fights since the more she made splinters of herself, the more her combat prowess weakened. However, where it truly shined was the fact that all of her splinters and her were basically the same being.
Each dungeon room was in their own separate dimension, so most means of communication was unusable when trying to communicate with someone on another room or floor. There were means to overcome this like a Demon Lord sharing their senses with up to 10 monsters or special thought projection skills that could cross that divide.
In Ciel’s case, she could synchronize with her splinters —or vice versa—even if they were in a different dungeon room or even if they were in a different dungeon altogether. Moreover, there was almost no delay at all. Such a performance was still impossible for most modern highspeed communications.
In fact, it could be argued that this skill was the primary reason why Procell decided to leave her in charge of the defense. More than her being an S rank monster with extreme power. More than her having all the knowledge of all the monsters of Avalon.
…by the way, she did try to synchronize with the splinters in Avalon, but to no avail.
Anyway, she placed small, almost invisible splinters in key positions throughout the dungeon and thus formed an information network. Her [Slime Network].
These splinters being so small, they obviously offered no fighting potential at all. However, what mattered was that they had access to Ciel’s numerous appraisal and analysis skills. The invading monsters’ abilities and skills were fully exposed to her.
“They’ve finally noticed that our attacks are physical and not magical, huh. And now they’re sending an elite team that are immune to physical attacks to crush the golems. It’s not necessarily a wrong move, but…”
This plan of attack could have worked.
Unfortunately for the [Tree] Demon Lord though, because Ciel saw through it, she was able to relay countermeasures to the golems via her splinters.
In accordance to that, the golems changed the magazines of their Aymrs and then pulled down a certain lever in the weapon. This caused the Aymrs to transform.
“I guess this move’s better than having no plan at all, but do you seriously think we haven’t prepared for this? So naïve.”
And so, the Mithril Golems began firing their weapons again.
Until a while ago, all magic power was used to speed up the bullets. It was a hybrid of physical and magical powers.
However, by changing the magazine and the gun’s mechanism, its attacks were now purely magical.
The new bullets were then fired. The powder made from a magic metal transformed into plasma, causing the case it was in to disintegrate. While leaving a trail of light, it pierced through an enemy.
That enemy died without being able to do anything against that magical attack.
It was only natural to expect monsters that nullified physical attacks to come. Through the battles that came before, the monsters of Avalon understood this kind of dungeon room’s various shortcomings and had their own way to make up for it.
Mithril Golems were given bullets that could deal with a wide range of circumstances; Having Ciel’s splinters appraise and analyze incoming enemies so that she could relay the proper type of bullet to be used; and all the other counter-countermeasures back in Avalon.
At this point, there might not be any efficient countermeasures left.
“Wait, you’ve still got one or two things up your sleeves, right? This is just the warm up, you know? We’ve got more crazy things ahead. At this rate, you might never get pass the first room. …you only have this much yet you believed can win against my Demon Lord? The nerve of you to underestimate my Demon Lord!”
Ciel’s slime body trembled as she expressed her anger.
She had remembered the confidence the [Tree] Demon Lord had when he announced he would fight and take down Procell back in the [Evening Party].
For a small fry to think he could win against her revered Demon Lord, she couldn’t help but be angered.
At that moment, the herbal tea on her desk made ripples.
“Hey Ciel, don’t get carried away by your emotions. That’s how carelessness is born. Besides, you might be fine there with the golems, but over here, I’m actually breaking a sweat, you know?”
“Ruhe-sama, thanks for all you hard work!”
Through water magic and the surface of the tea, Ruhe had shown to Ciel some images of what was happening in the otherworld.
“Wow, so amazing Ruhe-sama.”
And what Ciel saw were the corpses of the monsters that the [Tree] Demon Lord sent to the otherworld.
One standard counterplay to the golems were the use of otherworld monsters. These monsters didn’t have to brave the storm of bullets, after all. Getting behind the golem and then destroying them was possible.
Unfortunately for them, Avalon’s strongest otherworld fighter was there to stop them.
Procell thought just having her there, even without any fancy plans, was enough. And he was right.
In fact, Ruhe didn’t even have to fight. She just sang.
Her songs drove the minds of the enemies mad, making them fight amongst each other.
And just like that, all the enemy otherworld monsters were dead.
It has just been 1 hour since the fighting began.
Yet, in that short amount of time, Procell has gone deep into the [Tree] Demon Lord’s dungeon—while causing destruction along the way, of course. On the other hand, the [Tree] Demon Lord’s invading monsters were still in the very first room and didn’t seem to be able to get past it anytime soon.
Seeing these events, the hearts of the [Tree] Demon Lord as well as the Demon Lords of his world has already sunk to despair. At the same time, they began to curse such vast difference in power between the two sides.
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