[Ouroboros' End]
Stepping back outside early the next morning, Darganth and Allaire found the battlefield completely transformed overnight. Where before the remnants of spells, especially of fire spells which had often spread uncontrollably across the grassy landscape, littered the terrain, now a massive, if improvised defensive line stood between them and the smuggler camps.
Earthen ramparts up to two meters high formed the backbone of these defenses, interrupted only by the occasional natural obstruction and paths that allowed the army to move across the ditch that ran in front of the ramparts. Behind this, mages had conjured a variety of additional defensive positions, though their density and appearance varied between different sections of the frontline depending on the types of mages of that area and their specialties.
But while mana had eased this work, even with so many mages, the magical reserves available were a limiting factor. Thus, soldiers had worked tirelessly through the night to ensure the defenses were ready for the coming days' battles.
However, that also meant that the soldiers stationed on the front were in no condition to fight. To alleviate this problem, a fresh force of soldiers had already been marching from the wall to the front when Darganth had arrived atop the battlements. In exchange, the previous day's soldiers were rotated back out of the active portion of the army. Similarly to the mythic ranks that had fought the previous day, they would get to rest in the safety of the wall while the other half of the army continued the fight, only for the reverse to be the case on the following day.
Though if Darganth had to be honest, this deal was a lot better for the group that would be active throughout the coming day. After the losses the smugglers suffered the day before, he doubted they'd launch a major offensive, doubly so for an attack by their mythic ranks. As such, it might've been a smarter move to delay constructing the defenses so that the active troops had stamina for another day or two on the front line left, leaving the rear line troops to cycle in only for when it became apparent that the smugglers were going to launch another major fight.
But that wasn't his decision to make. As such, he watched with Allaire for a couple of minutes as new units arrived at the temporary fortification, only occasionally exchanging a few words until more of their group emerged from the stairway leading up to the top of the tower.
"Morning." Alicia said as she arrived at the top, with Vika and Sonita both following just behind her and greeting them wordlessly with a nod.
"Good morning." "Morning to you too." Darganth and Allaire replied simultaneously.
"And, slept well?" Darganth asked afterward.
"Not really." Alicia admitted, "Letting loose with my magic and going all out during the fight made me feel even more cramped than usual, so I've spent an hour or two flying around a bit in my true form."
"It's not too late to join Vagha and the others at the frontline if you want. You'd just have to do the same as they and hide a part of your mana signature so that the smugglers don't learn that you're a mythic rank." Darganth offered.
His reasoning for this secrecy was, or rather had been considering that it was already planned days ago, rather simple. Not only were dragons one of the most powerful species not just in terms of potential, but they shared with beasts and a few other species that a portion of that combat power wasn't reliant on mana reserves.
Thus, they could tear through hordes of weaker foes without exhausting their reserves, leaving them still capable of matching equal foes. Or the opposite, which was what Darganth was planning and why he wanted the true power of the dragons on their side kept hidden until the battles left as many enemy mythic ranks as possible exhausted.
Still, Alicia shook her head to his offer. "I prefer a relaxing flight across the forests on this side of the forest. Maybe hunt an animal or two."
Accepting her decision with a shrug, Darganth wasn't all that surprised. Even the fact that she had started to enjoy hunting for food in her true form had been a surprise to him when she had discovered that particular joy during their stay in the wilderness.
"If you want, you could also go now. I doubt there will be much action at all today. The chance that something that would require all of us to intervene happens is next to zero, not with the losses the smugglers suffered yesterday." Darganth said.
"I'd say don't tempt fate, but I doubt that saying is applicable with how much you know about that concept and how to control it." Alicia said with an amused grin, eliciting a small chuckle from Darganth.
"But I'll probably do it that way if you don't think I'm needed here." Alicia then decided a few moments later.
"No hurry, our allies seem to be taking their time as well, so it might be a long day." Darganth said.
Following his words, the collective gazes of their group shifted back toward where the army was still forming up, curious as to what prompted the statement. As they did, the reason quickly became apparent.
While the fresh soldiers from the town's forces were still spreading out across the defensive positions their colleagues had prepared, the smugglers had already finished gathering before their camps. However, compared to the day before, the force that was taking the field barely numbered half of the army from the day before. Despite this, the town's officers and its general made no effort to move forward, seemingly content to stay on the defensive even though they outnumbered their enemies.
In response, Darganth shook his head with a sigh before waving his hand and conjuring himself a stone seat. "This will take a while." He said and sat down.
This evaluation turned out correct. For the next three hours, the two armies met only through small skirmishes as scouts of opposing sides ran into each other. Such collisions were as sudden as they were chaotic, with invisibility spells and other magical aids rendering the scouts undetectable from anything greater than a few dozen meters away.
As such, when two opposing units encountered each other, they would almost immediately find themselves in a melee brawl that unveiled the positions of both to the entire battlefield. Within moments, nearby scouts would then rush to aid their allies, intensifying the chaos as attacks could come suddenly and from unexpected directions.
However, these brawls rarely lasted long. And if they did, it became devastating for all units within it. Because just as other scouts could see the fighting, so could the rest of both armies. Within a minute, enchanted weaponry like scorpions and different ritual spells were aimed at the fighting. The moment it became apparent that one side would win, the other army would unleash these attacks, quickly flattening entire areas of the battlefield with conjured meteors, massive explosions, and whatever other weapons and spells they had available.
A similar fate would befall any scout that veered too close to the enemy army. Between specialized mages and detection spells projected by the magic formations of the different units, they could already detect the hidden scouts at a few hundred meters away. If a unit didn't watch out for this and moved too close, archers would open up on them within seconds, followed shortly after by ritual spells that destroyed or scattered whatever survived the archers.
This approach only started to change around noon, at least the realm fragment's equivalent to it. By then, it was no longer just the small group of five that had been watching since the skirmishes started, with the others having gradually joined them in the first hour.
As they and numerous other mythic ranks watched from afar, the two armies moved against one another once more. This time, it was the smugglers' side that initiated the battle, moving against the fortified positions once it became apparent that the town's forces intended to focus on consolidating their gains.
Soon, the fight resumed where it had ended the day before. Lines of infantry moved like a tide, charging into their foes and clashing with them in vicious close-quarters fights before pulling back as the mana-less soldiers tired, only to charge anew a few minutes later. In between, cavalry slipped through gaps that opened up between the different units, allowing them to land devastating flanking maneuvers that scattered entire sections of the front line. However, such breakthroughs were rarely long-lasting as reserves moved forward to fill the hole in the frontline, uniting with the scattered remnants of the fleeing units and pulling them along to push back their foes.
Intermixed with this were spells of every element. Not only were individual mages launching their attacks, but ritual spells and spell engines, machines designed to efficiently conjure a specific spell, were also fired into the battle. Especially the latter of these filled the massive width of the battlefield with so many powerful waves of elemental energy that one would be forgiven for assuming that the mythic ranks had joined the battle.
Amid this onslaught of apocalyptic spells, the common soldiers could only pray that the magic formations held. However, both sides' soldiers were not always so lucky. This stood in stark contrast to the first day of the battle, when the battle had moved too far away from the wall too quickly for the town to move these assets along in time. Meanwhile, the smugglers had only barely managed to pull them back in time when their first line of defense had fallen faster than expected and not gotten them ready to fire again before the battle ended, leaving the normal soldiers as the main force of that day.
Consequently, the casualties were also higher, especially among the town's forces. While their defensive positions offered great protection against the advancing smuggler infantry, without enchantments neither the earthen palisade nor wooden barriers offered significant protection against such heavy strikes.
Soon, the first breaches appeared in the final defensive line. Soldiers were flung off walkways as attacks struck the wooden wall, sending debris and dead bodies flying into the camps beyond as the wall and the small hill it stood on were torn apart by the impacts.
That didn't mean that the town was losing. The opposite, in fact, as quite a few of its units had long since reached the first of the smuggler camps by the time this was happening. But with the battle stretching across well over a dozen kilometers, sufficiently distant sections were almost entirely separate battles.
However, the town's general was seemingly not satisfied with losing even just one part of their staging ground. Instead, barely a minute after the first breach, Darganth sensed two dozen mythic ranks heading out from the wall and flying toward the front line.
"What are you doing?" He muttered as he watched them join the battle, shaking his head with a sigh.
Unsurprisingly, the moment the mythic ranks reached the battle, the tide shifted in favor of the town. While ritual spells and spell engines can match the offensive output of mythic ranks to a degree and can be a threat to them, the only real way for them to bring one down was an ambush or overwhelming numbers, neither of which was the case in this battle.
Furthermore, before the smugglers could readjust their aim to the new threat, the first wave of spells erupted from approaching mages. And though the army's spell formations sprang up to intercept these, they fared even worse than they did against the previous bombardment. Within moments, a third of the spell engines in the areas where the mythic ranks had gone were reduced to broken wrecks that merely flickered with the remnants of the magical power that had once cursed through the heavily enchanted metal which made up their chassis.
In the time it took the crews to finally take aim at the mythic ranks, about half the mages had managed to launch another wave of spells, further whittling down the number of spell engines. Still, the remaining ones erupted with flashes of elemental power in near unison a few moments later, sending a mixture of spells largely belonging to the fire and lightning elements at the town's mythic ranks.
However, it quickly showed how inferior spell engines were in a direct confrontation with mythic ranks. Though their attacks were similarly powerful, with the strongest one barely reaching the shaping stage, and they were far more numerous, they were also far less accurate than a mythic rank. Whereas the mages could adjust their aim with pinpoint accuracy up until the moment they launched it, sometimes even afterward depending on the spell, spell engines had a predictable firing arc and often required two or even more soldiers to turn the chassis when it needed to be readjusted.
Still, compared to the mages that powered the ritual casting, the spell engines fared exceedingly well simply by virtue of managing to fire once. Because before the ritual spells could even start to take shape, the aura users among the mythic ranks had already rushed past the smugglers' front line and were slamming into the mage formations with brutal efficiency. Aura arced around their body as they slammed down amid their clustered formation, followed by it lashing out as they shaped it into solid projectiles and wildly unleashed them into the mages that then surrounded them.
As Darganth watched this happen, he braced himself for the possibility that the smugglers' mythic ranks could answer in kind. Though fights between mythic ranks were exhausting and often inconclusive for both parties, with the town's aura users having pushed deep behind their lines, the smugglers could have an opportunity for a decisive strike, something that was rare to come by when there were armies as support.
While weapons such as ritual spells and spell engines didn't really hold up well in a direct fight against mythic ranks, they were great support tools for allied mythic ranks. Combined with the spell formations of the armies, they could allow a single mythic rank to fend off numerous equal opponents or foes that would otherwise be far too powerful for them. Consequently, mythic ranks tended to stay close enough to these forces to fall back toward them if the fight turned against them, which is why opportunities for decisive strikes were rare and often costly.
However, it turned out the smuggler leadership either didn't see this as the opportune moment Darganth did, or simply didn't see the need to exploit it. Because instead of mythic ranks surging forward from their camps to punish the aura users for pushing so far past the enemy lines, a horn sounded and the entire army started to retreat instead.
Despite its suddenness, this retreat was exceedingly orderly. For the front line, archers and mages briefly intensified their attacks, forcing the town's soldiers to hunker down behind their shields just as the smugglers' infantry pulled away. Cavalry had an even easier time, with illusions that feigned a turn into a different direction being used to cover their retreat and throw off the enemy pursuers just long enough for them to regroup with nearby units.
In contrast to that, the magical bombardment units had significant trouble retreating, and not just because it were mythic ranks that they were facing. While the mages were still lucky enough that a few in each group were proficient enough in teleportation magic to rescue their colleagues one by one, though not without casualties as the aura users kept tearing through them all the while, the soldiers manning the spell engines had the impossible task of moving the heavy contraptions into the closest camps before the town's soldiers could catch up.
The only silver lining for this last group was that they were the unit stationed the closest to the camp, meaning they had only two or three kilometers to cross until the soldiers still stationed in it could at least give them covering fire. However, despite this, few would arrive with their spell engine in tow, while even more had chosen to just accept their fate instead of receiving the punishment that would await them if they returned without this valuable piece of equipment that had been given to them.
Soon, after the last of these had crossed into the firing range of the camps, the town's general also signaled the troops to pull back. The fighting of the day had been more intense than anticipated, and the town's troops no longer had the stamina and morale to sustain a fight for the enemy camps.
Watching as the town's army thus pulled back to their fortifications, or what remained of them, Allaire shook her head. "All this for nothing."
"I suspect this will be the trend of the next couple of days. And while I doubt any one of us likes it, attrition warfare is definitely advantageous for us." Darganth said.
"Though we could bring some swing into it and see how it goes if we throw the ogres at our foes. The general would probably jump at the chance to conserve his own troops and it might be enough to wear the smugglers down to a point where we could win with a full assault." Scalladras interjected.
"We'll see how it goes over the next couple of days. If the town manages to capture a few camps, we'll keep following their strategy. If not, then we'll do it your way cause I have no interest in being stuck in this battle for longer than a week or two." Darganth said, still seeing enough potential in the general's plan to want to see how it plays out.
With that decided, the group lingered a while longer atop the tower, watching as the last stragglers of the day's fighting filtered back behind the defensive lines. Soon after, the mythic ranks also arrived back at the wall, with the general almost simultaneously signaling that the mythic ranks could step back from their positions of immediate readiness. And while Darganth and the group around him weren't strictly bound by these orders, they also took it as a cue to walk back down into the interior of their tower.