Starting from Zero

Chapter 156: Defending Lost City [Vol 5 Chapter 7]

Translator: blackberrry Editor: blackberrry

"What's that, what's that?" Ling used one hand to hit me multiple times while pointing with the other to a small creature running across the grass and screamed in excitement, luckily her level was now the same as mine, and her ATK was not as when she was the Dark Goddess!

"That is a rat!" I hung my head in low spirits. "That is No. 3000 thing you've asked me! Please, I'm begging you, let me go!"

"But I don't know what all of them are!" Ling placed her right forefinger to the corner of her mouth and looked at me with her puppy eyes which instantly made my heart feel even more troubled!

"Although you've never left the Dark Lord Shrine, you should have seen a few things before? How old are you exactly?"

"Ever since I was born, I had always stayed in the Dark Lord Shrine, those idiots (Great Dark Priest and the Apollyon Knights) always make me decide on this and decide on that as though they don't even understand anything. It seemed as though I was making the decisions for all of them! So I had never stepped out of the Shrine before! Much less all of these things, I don't think I can even recognize all the Darkness-type creatures!"

"Treat it as I never said anything!" How could I harbor any anger towards such a person?

Ling suddenly became excited once again. "What's that in the sky?! What are they?! There's so many of them! They look fun!"

I looked up with doubt and saw that the sky was covered with a patch of black things that flew over. They were flying at a very high altitude and were extremely fast, preventing me from recognizing them. Under Ling's plea, I activated [Star Gaze] and looked at them. A large flock of birds quickly entered my vision, they had gold feathers and had lion bodies, they were Griffins!

Why are there so many Griffins here?

We were in the Dark Shrine region and Griffins were Light Faction Companions, so they should not fly in and in such a huge group.

I increased the power of [Star Gaze] multiple times, revealing the armor-clad riders on the Griffins.

What the hell, aren't they the troops belonging to the Great Cities? According to their speed and direction, it looks like they are heading towards…. Lost City?

They were actually trying to sneak an attack on Lost City! After trampling on the Iron Fortress, they were still not satisfied! No longer lost in thoughts, I used the Ring of Teleportation and reached Lost City and summoned the Phantom Knights and Ling.

"Scott, do you know where Clark resides?"

"Yes, I do!"

"Quickly go to him and inform him that the Light Shrine had sent troops to ambush Lost City!"

"Yes!" Scott immediately turned and ran off.

"The rest of you, follow me!" I led the rest and headed towards the training place where I used to train with the Boomerangs. As it was not far from the Teleport Station, we arrived not long after.

Night Shade sprinted too quickly and when we arrived at the training place, I jumped down his back with the inertia, but as it was too strong, I did not stabilize myself in time, and lost my rhythm, resulting in me flying out and smashing straight into the doors.

"QUICK…..QUICK….! Mythal Legion, Pay attention, The Light Shrine has sent forces here…..they want to launch a sneak attack, quickly get into defense positions!"

The Mythal Legion that was in training all paused upon hearing my words. One of them, most probably one of a higher rank, quickly ran over and pulled me up. "How did you come to know about this?"

"I saw their vanguard troops on the way here! They are all Griffins numbered in the tens of thousands!"

This Knight immediately shouted to the rest: "Listen up all of you, the Mythal Legion will fall into position now. Lost City will be put in a state of war as of now!"

The entire Mythal Legion rushed out and headed towards different parts of the City. I quickly ran over to Clark and found Scott standing at the entrance.

"Have you informed Clark?"

"Yes I did, Clark has already left to inform the rest and got me to wait here for you. Clark wanted you to wait inside his shop and not run around."

"Oh! Alright, I got it!" I brought the Phantom Knights and Ling into the shop, but I knew that waiting inside was not the best plan.

I jumped to the roof of Clark's shop from the window. Standing on the 3-story building allowed me to view a large part of the City. I suddenly sensed the power of Evil increasing and looked at the source of the power. The Underworld Eye had actually been activated at the tall Tower in the center of the City! The originally closed Underworld Eye was in the process of opening, and the power of Evil was gradually increasing.

It took more than 1 minute for the Underworld Eye to completely open. A gold beam of light shot out from it which resembled a searchlight, as though it was looking for something in the sky.

"What're you doing?" Clark who had rushed back saw me standing on the roof of his building.

"I'm just watching how you guys are preparing for battle, I want to build my own City as well, so I need to learn all of these things!"

"Then get down here! Follow me to the Walls!"

"Can I? That's great!" I jumped down from the roof directly in excitement, with the Phantom Knights and Ling following behind.

I ran towards the City Walls with Clark and saw all the citizens and families in Lost City all dressed in Knights armor or Mage robes running towards the Walls.

"Clark! Are all the citizens of Lost City all soldiers and mages?"

"Almost all of them! All the citizens in Lost City are all old Spirits of a long past, everyone here has some knowledge of battles, so whenever there are wars, everyone will go up and fight together!"

"That's sick!"

We arrived at the City Walls and saw a large group of Knights and Mages running up the walls. I was positioned in one of the arrow towers on the wall (similar to the beacon towers on the Great Wall), where it was much higher and had a better line of sight. After settling my position, Clark disappeared, and I stood on the Tower and looked around.

The black lake around Lost City had more than 10 Cannon platforms raised, while the Large Magic Spell Cannons still under the water, it seemed that they had delayed the activation of the Cannons. I suddenly noticed something interesting, the Underworld Eye was actually the main control system for the large cannons, and wherever the Underworld Eye's light shone at, the Cannons would follow accordingly.

I heard a queer sound from behind. When I turned and looked, I noticed that the top of the tower in the middle of the city had opened a small door with countless of ghosts that resembled stone statues gushing out in formations. Lost City actually had an aerial army and it was the first time that it had been witnessed!

Before the din behind me was over, sounds of water gushing came out from the lake. A whirlpool appeared in the center and moved towards the edge of the lake. When it reached the shore, a hole appeared. Due to the high-speed revolution of the black colored lake water, a vacuum of space was formed from within, forming a passageway from the hole.

…..rumble...rumble….rumble.

The sound of an orderly unit could be heard from the lake as rows after rows of monsters walked out from the whirlpool.

I did not know what they were. They resembled humans in the way that they stood on two legs, but their leg joints were actually in reverse, like the joints of birds! The monsters that were close to 2 meters tall looked like locusts standing upright! They not only had a pair of arms, they had two more limbs that resembled awls that had sharp pointed ends that twinkled with a cold light! The terrifying part was their heads, the four sharp teeth outside of their mouths illustrated their carnivorous natures.

The stream of monsters from the whirlpool was endless and at the same time, more passageways suddenly revealed themselves on top of the city walls, and many large wooden constructs were raised up. I realized in shock that they were actually catapults, not just any ordinary catapults, but ultra large capstan catapults. These constructs relied on the power of gears to load the catapults and could throw large rocks the size of full-grown elephants out over 7-8 kilometers away, imagine how destructive that would be.

The catapults got into position the same time as when the soldiers reached their positions. Some guy dressed in red armor walked up above the City Gates with Clark by his side, I immediately knew that he was some important figure! The whirlpool on the lake had already disappeared, in the short span of a few minutes, the unit actually appeared over a thousand men (monsters).

The man in red said something to the people by his side, but due to the distance, I could not hear anything. But what happened after that enlightened me! The long stone bridge that connected the City to the shore actually lowered down and into the lake! Lost City's mechanisms were truly all-rounded, they could even lower the long bridge!

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A few minutes after the large army was in position, black dots finally appeared on the distant horizon, I knew instantly that they were the Griffins! The Griffins were extremely fast, and in the blink of the eye, they closed in towards us. The gold beam of light unleashed by the Underworld Eye behind me suddenly intensified and shot towards the Griffins in the sky. Instantly, the Magic Crystal Cannons raised their muzzle towards the direction of the light.

BOOOOM!

That was the only sound I heard, all the Large Magic Crystal Cannons had fired at the same time. The base plate beneath every single Cannon released ripples that echoed outwards at the same time, produced by the powerful shot of the cannons. A row of cannon shots flew into the Griffins Unit, where the agile Griffins started to avoid them but due to their quantity and that they were extremely packed, every shot struck and killed one Griffin.

The gold beam of light suddenly transformed into 10 light threads which aimed at a fixed position within the large pack of Griffins, while the Magic Crystal Cannons also started to aim at different positions. I used [Star Gaze] and watched the Griffins that were pinpointed by the light threads, I wanted to see if those Griffins were different from the other Griffins.

I observed them for a moment and realized that those Griffins that were targeted actually had two riders on them! Aside from the Griffin Rider in front, there were Mages riding pillion!

Do the mages have some special abilities to them? Why did the Underworld Eye target them first?

The Magic Crystal Cannons shot relentlessly at the targeted Griffins that had the Mages on them, and it looked like the Griffins would not be able to occupy Lost City at all, the ground forces were already far stronger than them!

Are the people at the Light Shrines all Idiots? To think that just by sending a few Griffins, they can take over Lost City?

My doubts did not last for long. Very quickly, the Griffins got through the forests and arrived in the sky above the lake. All of the Griffins that had the Mages with them started to descend while the Locust Army (They truly looked exactly like Locusts!) outside Lost City suddenly launched their assault towards the Griffins, which was countered by the Griffins swooping down and pouncing on the Locusts. It was obvious that the Locusts were not the match for the Griffins, although they had the advantage in numbers, they were unable to fight against the Griffins. The Locusts turned their targets towards the Mages that were already placed on the ground. This confirmed my guess, the Mages played an important role, otherwise Lost City's Locust Army would not be so fixated on them!

The locusts were extremely fast, although the Griffins were doing their utmost to intercept the locusts, many of them were still able to get past them and closed in on the Mages. Upon their immediate descent, the Mages were focused on drawing something on the ground and were completely unaware of the locusts rushing towards them.

The locusts did not care about anything, the first few locusts that reached the Mages immediately started killing them. Many of the Mages were killed even before even completing half of the drawing. The Magic Crystal Cannons did not stop either, they were continuously unleashing barrages of shots, but many of the Griffins used their own bodies to deflect the shots, and the only effect the cannons provided were from severely wounding and killing many of the Griffins.

I suddenly heard some clanking sounds like what a metal chain would produce when being torn apart. I retracted my gaze and looked at its source, to realize that the catapults were winding up!

WENGGGGGG!

An extremely low buzz sound shot through the air, another catapult was launched. A gigantic rock projectile was flung through the air, producing the strange sound, the processed rock was easily recognizable due to its roundness. The high speed of the projectile caused it to spin forward upon landing on the ground, their goals - the Mages!

The Griffins in the sky were unable to block the rolling boulders that had landed on the ground, even if they wanted to sacrifice themselves, it would be futile, the power in the rolling boulders was enough to flatten more than 10 Griffins and not stop! The boulders were much more effective than the shots unleashed by the Cannons, many of the Mages were squashed into meat piles, the only flaw was that countless of Locusts were also squashed flat!

With the locusts, magic crystal cannons and catapults at work together, the Mages suffered. But when 70% of the Mages were down, one of them completed their drawing, it was only then, did I realize what they were doing! It was a 7 to 8 meter diameter ring with a hexagram within and was unleashing a dazzling blue and white light. Even a fool would recognize it, it was a Spell Formation, and to form a Spell Formation at such a location, the only probable Spell was most probably a mass Teleport!

Right, when I guessed it, the Spell Formation dazzled and teams of cavalry rushed out. The Mage who drew the Spell Formation laughed and used his Mage robes to wipe away the perspiration from his head. Right when he turned around, a sharp awl stabbed into his body and sent him to Heaven. Before the locust could even pull out its awl, it was sliced into half by the Cavalry that appeared!

The other spell formations were completed one after another, releasing white lights after white lights and unleashing an army of cavalry to rush out like a flood.

It was an eye-opener, the real battle laid not in the number of troops brought to battle, but the swift and powerful defensive aerial defense bringing forth many Mages that excelled in Spell Formations to the City to prepare for the Mass Teleports! Us Players were still stuck in the age of marching on foot and were compared to the NPC troops, we could be called primitive!

When the forces teleported out of the Spell Formation, the locusts lost their advantage, the cavalry was able to handle the Locusts easily, and very quickly cleared the entire army of Locusts. Suddenly, the Spell Formation teleported large scale catapults, many aerial ladder vehicles and some square boxed vehicles that brought wheels with it, something I had never seen before.

When the aerial ladder vehicles appeared, they immediately retreated, I guess it was because Lost City had an extremely broad lake and thus were temporarily unusable. The Catapults were quickly separated and put into work by the personnel. I suddenly saw a large boulder projectile flying towards the City.

I watched the trajectory of the boulder and knew that it would fly past the walls into the city, but the Underworld Eye suddenly shot a beam of gold light at the boulder.

BANG.

A Magic Crystal Cannon shot at the boulder in the sky and shattered it into pieces. Following the first launch of boulder were the second and third launches, the Underworld Eye separated its gold beam of light and aimed at these two projectiles and was followed by the Magic Crystal Cannons taking turns to fire at the boulders. But as more and more catapults were installed and shot, the Magic Crystal Cannons were no longer able to destroy them as quickly!

Right when I was thinking about why the catapults were not shooting their boulders at the Magic Crystal Cannons first, it happened. One of the boulders struck one of the Magic Crystal Cannon. But this boulder was instead shattered into pieces and fell into the lake, but the Magic Crystal Cannon was completely fine! No wonder, the catapults were ignoring the Magic Crystal Cannons and constantly shooting at the city or wall!

The square boxed vehicles carrying wheels started to move towards the lake. The Underworld Eye suddenly gave up attacking the boulders and aimed at these square boxed vehicles. But a pity, many Mages formed spellshields in front of these vehicles, and the Crystal Cannon's projectiles were only able to shoot through a few of these shields before losing power, although every one of these projectiles killed a few Mages, they were unable to reach the boxes!

The boxed vehicles finally reached the lakeside, but the soldiers behind did not seem to want to stop, they continued pushing these boxes into the lake. After being submerged in the water, the lake suddenly released strange sounds. Many whirlpools started forming on the surface of the water that the boxed vehicles were under.

"What do you think??" Clark suddenly appeared behind me.

"What're those for?" I pointed to the square box and asked.

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Without even looking, Clark explained: "That is a top grade product that an Alchemist can produce - the Water Suction Device. It relies on Magic Crystal Stones as power with a water spell formation and spatial formation within. The water spell formation will continuously suck water into the vehicle, while the spatial spell formation will send the water out, this way, they can drain the lake!"

"What! So powerful? Then won't the black water lake around Black City be drained very quickly?"

"It will definitely be drained, but after all, this lake is not meant to be a moat, and to completely drain it will require some time. We can only hope that we can destroy more of the enemies during this period."

"Then you're just going to let them drain all the water?"

"You can see it for yourself, they are sustaining too many spellshields, we have no choice!"

While we were conversing, the Griffins in the sky suddenly rushed towards the City. The Stone Ghost Statues in the City immediately flew into the sky and met with the Griffins, tangling in a chaotic battle in the sky. The Dark Mages and Witches in Lost City all started casting anti-life restriction spells. The anti-life restriction spell is an AOE spell that is sustained for a period of time, mainly to form a vortex that continuously absorbs HP in the fixed region, furthermore, as long as it was not forcefully removed by Light Spells, it can sustain for a very long time. Even if the Caster was killed, the Spell can exist for a certain duration before disappearing.

As the spells can automatically target enemies, the Stone Ghost Statues were not affected at all, but the Griffins were unfortunate, from time to time some of them would fall dead to the ground, of course, the Stone Ghost Statues also had losses!

"Watch out!" Clark pulled me to one side right when one of the stone ghost statues dropped at my original position and shattered into pieces. The Stone Ghost Statues were formed out of rocks, as long as they were killed or went to rest, they would turn back into stone, so after being killed and dropped from the sky, it had dropped and shattered due to the impact.

Behind us, Ling clapped her hands excitedly: "This is the first time I am witnessing such a grand battle! This is fabulous!"

Clark leaned in closer and whispered to me: "Where did you get this girl from? Why do I find her so familiar?"

I whispered in his ear softly: "She is the previous Dark Goddess!"

"Her Majesty Goddess?" Clark blurted out loud.

"I'm no longer the Goddess!" Ling was still observing the battle below and spoke up without turning back. "The Dark Lord Shrine now belongs to and is under the control of my sister Annie!"

Clark placed his right hand on his chest and bowed 45 degrees down. "Regardless of whether you were or are the Dark Goddess, there is a need for respect and politeness towards you!"

"Alright, alright, I'm just a retired Goddess, no need for the formalities! Ah! Look, there's no more lake water!"

I looked down, the level of water in the lake had certainly dropped drastically, but it was not completely dry. The already dried up lake bed had many enormous eel-like creatures spasming on the ground, while inside the remaining water were many exposed heads with sharp teeth growing out from them. As the level of the lake water continued to fall, these things with teeth on their heads finally revealed themselves. They were creatures that greatly resembled the already extinct Plesiosaurus, the difference being their heads were much larger. Additionally, their teeth looked to be extremely powerful, so it looked as though their appetites, their body size was extremely well proportionate. One of the enemies was not careful, and the strange sea monster bit down on a catapult, maybe they were all extremely unhappy about the water situation as all of them started to rush towards the Water Suction Devices. But the monsters had limbs like turtles, swimming was not a problem, but their walking speed was too slow! Majority of the Water Suction Devices were able to pull back safely, but the guards that rushed up to protect the devices met their demise. The ATK of the monsters were not inferior to Dragons, with one swing, they were able to throw both man and mounts so far that no traces of them could be seen!

"Are they not part of Lost City's forces?" I looked at the monsters, although they were attacking the enemies, they did not look as though they were part of the formation or were in sync with the soldiers, they were just venting their anger!

"They are the original residents of the lakes, we do not care much about them, and just let them defend the lake themselves!"

"No wonder!"

Although the monsters below were strong, they were unable to handle the number of enemies. The cavalries all started to bring down the monsters in a few hits! The lake that was being drained was almost wiped out, with even the wet mud beneath turning into dry soil. The siege carts and aerial ladder vehicles were finally being pushed forward. The Magic Crystal Cannons built in the lake were sliced into wasted metals by the cavalries, which resulted in the Cannons self-detonating and dragging groups of enemies along with them to death!

The battle at the city walls finally begun, the army that had reached the city walls rushed in like a flood, which to me, a spectator, was a spectacular sight. Although the number of participants in the war was close to 1 million (Allied Forces 900 thousand, Lost City less than 100 Thousand), imagine the scene of how a narrow space could stretch the large army of 900 thousand!

Although the Magic Crystal Cannons were destroyed, the Underworld Eye still had work to do. The gold beam of light shot straight into the clouds and caused lightning to form. Rain started to patter down. I extended my hand out to catch some of the 'rain', only to realize that it was blood that was falling!

The Allied Forces soldiers who were exposed to the blood realized that the rainbow-colored spells on their bodies were eroded! The soldiers who lost their lusters felt a substantial drop in their fighting capabilities.

The cavalries that arrived at the aerial ladder vehicles stepped up the ladder with their mounts and rushed up the city walls (These aerial ladder vehicles are not like ancient vehicles, but more like escalators).

The cavalry that rushed up the wall were immediately locked in a heated battle with the Mythal Legion Knights on the city walls. There were very few Mythal Legion Apollyon Knights, thus they were tasked near the stairs, fully utilizing their immense power to spearhead all the incoming calvaries from the narrow stairs.

The rear suddenly sent out a large tool which I recognized it as a battering ram, it was built like a seesaw, just that the hanging part was an extremely large bronze pillar. Clark shouted to the catapults nearby: "Destroy that battering ram!"

The catapults immediately changed their targets, but the enemy Mages once again unleashed their spellshields and blocked the catapults without caring about anything else, as long as they helped the battering ram to the city, it would be their win. The Dark Mages on the City Walls unleashed all sorts of AOE offensive spells on the crowd beneath, but a pity there were too many of them, and they could not kill everyone!

The Underworld Eye behind us started to change again, the beam of light that was originally aimed at the sky started to spread all out and from a beam of light, it turned into scattering rays, like a torchlight suddenly turning into a candle!The rain of blood outside the city suddenly stopped along with the dissipation of light, but the ground started to tremble. Slowly, a large field of zombies and skeletons rose from the ground, although the mass of them was low level, they were large in numbers, the first wave already close to a million, and the number was still rising! The Mages by the battering ram were disrupted by the zombies and skeletons, causing a flaw to appear within the spellshields.

The catapults on the wall grabbed the opportunity and flung out a row of projectiles. With one large thump, the entire battering ram was smashed into the ground at a distance 300 meters away from the city gates! A second battering ram appeared from the Mass Teleport Spell Formation, but there were too many zombies and skeletons that blocked their paths.

The rain of blood that had stopped had turned the dried lake bed into thick mud, restricting the cavalries movements, which made them less agile as compared to the zombies and skeletons, resulting in them being beaten weary, with the occasional cavalries that managed to rush up the walls to be sent down the city wall by the Apollyon Knights that held the absolute advantage on the wall.

As the number of Zombies and Skeletons increased, the Light Shrine's Allied Forces gradually turned passive. Two large balls of flames suddenly exploded in the sky above Teleport Spell Formation and were followed by the gradual retreat of the forces. I guessed that the two large balls of flames were the signal for them to retreat.

It was not easy for them to retreat as well, the ground was too slippery and there were too many skeletons and zombies, adding that the catapults were constantly unleashing projectiles onto them, the allied forces suffered a huge loss in the midst of the retreat. But at long last, the allied forces were able to reach the Mass Teleport Spell Formation after the loss of a huge pile of bodies. That was when a large black monster flew over from the other side of Lost City. I saw that it was a Dark Flying Dragon, which I supposed was the reinforcements from the Dark Lord Shrine!

The Allied Forces no longer held any hope and rushed into the Spell Formation, they had suffered greatly, but Lost City had lost a part of their strength as well, although lesser.

After the Army's retreat, the skeletons and zombies outside the city all became still and gradually submerged into the ground, as though they had never appeared. All of the corpses that were defeated were also turned as well, the more intact corpses becoming zombies, while the more broken bodies into skeletons, and like the fairytales, they all submerged into the ground. At that moment, I finally understood why Lost City had so many zombies and skeletons, after every battle, all that was left were the corpses from the Light Shrine!

It was a pity that it was an NPC war, I could not obtain any EXP or any of their equipment (Battles between NPCs would not drop equipment), but at least I got to understand more on City battles, especially on how the Light Faction would attack, they actually utilized such a high-end method of movement, I always thought that they would march to siege, who would have known that all that came out were calvaries!

"Ziri!" Clark suddenly shouted for me.

"Huh? What?"

"Follow me, the City Lord wants to see you!"

"That guy in the red armor?"

"That's right!"

"Why does he want to see me?"

"You'll find out when you go to him!"

With my suspicions, I followed Clark down the City Walls and headed to the city center. I was unable to think of a reason for the City Lord to want to look for me!