bantayden Chapter 102 : Chapter 102
Chapter 102 : Chapter 102
Chapter 102: Three Men Stabilize the Whole Battle
Leading Team One, Li Mu quickly reinforced another Array Banner guard unit.
By now, Guidance Officer Liu had also begun to realize just how critical these three reservist teams were.
Quite apart from the fact that the reservists were fresh troops, each team also had nearly twice as many people as any individual Array Banner guard unit.
The moment they arrived as reinforcements, they would inevitably smash through the monsters and force them back.
Guidance Officer Liu was no fool. He did not leave the reservist teams behind to guard the Array Banners after they had reinforced a position.
Instead, once a reservist team had stabilized a banner guard unit, he used the time they had bought to dispatch civilian martial artists or other reserve forces from the rear to replenish that banner’s defenders.
Then he pulled those three reservist teams back out again and sent them off as rapid-response units to put out fires elsewhere.
For the time being, there simply was no better rapid-response force to be found than those three teams.
That bunch of boys in school uniforms were so fired up that they charged around howling like madmen.
They were practically like zombies.
It was just like a father and son competing against someone else to carry bricks.
At the crucial moment, the father threw out his back, clapped his son on the shoulder, and said:
“Son, whether the two of us win today or not depends entirely on you!”
What else was there to say after that?
The son would absolutely explode on the spot and roar, “Then I’ll carry this whole damn thing on my back!!”
That was exactly how the reservists felt right now—as though they were carrying the sky for the adults.
Back in camp, people usually only patted them on the shoulder and said:
“Kid, work hard. Once you grow stronger...”
But now—
they were the brightest stars on this battlefield.
Li Mu reinforced three guard units in succession.
He killed several hundred monsters, and his Triumph Points rose past seven thousand.
Finding a brief moment, Li Mu started assigning points.
The first thing he upgraded was Divine Weapon Art.
After spending over a thousand points, he raised Divine Weapon Art to 3,870 jin.
Adding the cudgel’s own weight of a little over two hundred jin— 4,090 jin.
Two tons.
After that, Li Mu spent 2,800 points.
He upgraded the Safe-Haven Method skill tree five times in a row.
[The Safe-Haven Method’s range has expanded to a radius of ten meters.]
[The strength of the Safe-Haven Method barrier is now seventy percent of Bronze Head and Iron Arms.]
[Within the Safe-Haven Method, the True Qi enhancement for allies has increased to 15%.]
[Within the Safe-Haven Method, Qi and blood and True Qi recover slowly.]
[The Safe-Haven Method’s range has expanded to a radius of thirty meters.]
The further down the skill tree he went, the more points it cost. That last line alone had cost Li Mu a full 1,000 points.
By then, a full half hour had passed since the battle began.
Monster corpses littered the battlefield.
The casualties among the soldiers had also begun to rise, while their stamina, True Qi, and willpower all started dropping sharply.
Even though the three reservist teams had already reinforced more than a dozen Array Banner guard units, the defensive ring around the two military districts had well over a hundred Array Banners in total.
At this point, both Pearl Military District and Red Moon Military District had already begun shrinking their battle lines inward across the board.
Once they were pushed all the way back to the outer wall, there would be nowhere left to retreat.
And the consequences would be catastrophic.
Very few of the guard units would survive.
The casualties would reach astronomical numbers.
“No good! We’re still being pushed back!”
In his private channel with Li Mu, Guidance Officer Liu spoke with obvious worry.
Li Mu gritted his teeth.
He looked up at the two layers of dark clouds in the sky.
Were Liang Huajun and the others playing mahjong up there against the Profound Rank monsters?
Even if they were playing mahjong, one round should have finished by now!
Fortunately, this was exactly why Li Mu had upgraded Safe-Haven Method.
“You take command!”
Li Mu grabbed a soldier who had been charging at the front lines with him the whole time.
“Me?” The soldier had been fighting to his heart’s content, and when Li Mu suddenly told him to take command, he froze.
Li Mu nodded.
Then he swung his long cudgel hard across the ground, tracing out the Safe-Haven Method, and withdrew from the battle line.
Transforming into an eagle, he shot straight toward the Red Moon Military District on the opposite side.
The three reservist teams had been reinforcing only the Pearl Military District.
They had not touched the Red Moon Military District at all.
Red Moon Military District had more people than Pearl Military District, but even so, it had also begun collapsing by now.
Eagle Transformation did not just allow him to fly quickly—his eyesight also became exceptionally sharp.
Looking down from high in the air, Li Mu saw the battlefield even more clearly than Guidance Officer Liu did from the command center.
It resembled an almost circular many-sided shape.
Wherever one section began caving inward, it meant that an Array Banner was about to fall.
The moment Li Mu spotted such a point, he dove straight down.
Inside the Red Moon Military District command center, a temporary command officer was likewise directing the battle.
But they did not have someone like Li Mu—a clear-minded, immensely powerful Wolf Guard—to help coordinate the battlefield.
Their reservists were being used like civilian martial artists, rushing everywhere to put out fires and exhausting themselves in the process.
As the battle deteriorated further and further, cold sweat had already covered the command officer’s forehead.
“Command Officer! Banner No. 71’s guard unit can’t hold!”
“Command Officer, Banner No. 92 is in critical danger! They’re requesting permission to withdraw!”
“Banner No. 59 has taken heavy casualties! They’re about to be pushed back to the outer wall!”
Listening to one desperate report after another, like death warrants being read aloud, the command officer was already sinking into a dazed stupor.
The screen switched to Banner No. 59’s guard unit.
Out of more than two hundred men, only a hundred and fifty or sixty remained, and nearly all of them were wounded.
They were holding on by the last breath in their bodies.
The command officer repeatedly shouted into the channel for someone to reinforce that position.
But there was no one left nearby to send.
He even began to sag, bracing himself against the command platform in defeat.
He knew perfectly well what awaited that guard unit next.
They would be driven back to the wall, with nowhere left to retreat.
Then the monsters would wipe them out completely and destroy the Array Banner.
That would tear open an enormous breach, allowing the monsters to pour madly into the military district.
“Pass down the order. Everyone is to fall back and prepare for street fighting—”
“Command Officer! Look!!”
Before he could finish, an excited shout interrupted him.
He looked up and saw a figure dropping from the sky onto the main screen.
While still suspended in midair, that person swept a cudgel fiercely toward the ground and drew a gigantic golden circle, enclosing the retreating guard unit within it.
At first, the guard unit had no idea what it was, so they all retreated past the golden ring.
Only then did they realize that the monsters were being completely blocked by the barrier along the golden circle’s edge.
And the man who had drawn the ring had not even landed.
After drawing it, he shouted:
“Small Fortress!”
Then he transformed straight into a gigantic eagle and flew away again.
The soldiers inside the Safe-Haven Method were utterly stunned by what they had just seen.
The monsters hurled themselves madly against the barrier at the edge.
Yet they could not enter the circle.
And while standing within it, the soldiers discovered that their Qi and blood and True Qi were actually beginning to recover slowly.
The only issue was that the circle was not very large. It could not hold everyone, only barely half of them.
The captain quickly understood the meaning of the four words Li Mu had shouted.
Brief and to the point— this was a Small Fortress.
He immediately roared, “The wounded, fall back behind the golden ring and hold the line from there!”
At the same time, he cleverly planted the Array Banner at the very front edge of the circle.
That way, the monsters were blocked directly in front of the banner, greatly reducing the area from which they could attack the barrier.
Meanwhile, the soldiers inside could still attack the monsters.
Who knew how many hits this thing of Li Mu’s could withstand, or how long it could last?
But they had no other choice.
Inside the Red Moon command center, the command officer then saw Li Mu fly directly toward Banner No. 72 and Banner No. 91, both of which had already sounded the alarm and begun withdrawing.
He used the same method again.
He dove from the sky, paused in midair as he changed form, traced out a massive golden ring, shouted, “Small Fortress,” then transformed straight back into an eagle and flew to the next Array Banner position.
In only five minutes, Li Mu had already flown to twelve Array Banner positions and drawn twelve circles.
And whenever Duplication Technique came off cooldown, Li Mu would even leave behind two duplicates to help kill monsters.
“It’s that Wolf Guard from Pearl Military District!”
“It’s that guy called Li Mu!!”
Someone had already recognized him and shouted excitedly.
The command officer stared in dumbfounded astonishment.
Even Li Mu’s duplicates alone, once they charged into the monster horde, were unstoppable.
The cudgel in their hands was like a giant wiper blade.
One sweep flattened an entire swath.
A Fourth Grade monster’s body caved in.
A Third Grade monster folded in half on the spot.
The members of the guard units fighting shoulder to shoulder with Li Mu’s duplicates were all left staring in shock.
The only pity was that Li Mu’s duplicates could only last for one minute.
If they could have lasted eight or ten minutes, then one duplicate alone would have been worth twenty men.
Perhaps even more...And even more astonishing was this: as long as Li Mu drew down one of those golden circles, any guard unit that held its ground from within it became like a nail driven savagely into the earth.
Not one step farther back.
The Safe-Haven Method lasted fifteen minutes, but there was also a limit to how many attacks it could endure.
At Banner No. 91, the third place where Li Mu had drawn the Safe-Haven Method, the captain there had not been as clever as the first one.
A huge number of monsters hurled themselves against the Safe-Haven Method barrier without restraint, and four minutes later, the barrier shattered with a crash.
And just then— a tremendous boom erupted from the dark clouds in the sky, which suddenly burst apart and scattered.
Countless corpses came raining down from above.
The battle in the upper layer had reached a conclusion.
The instant Li Mu saw this, he did not hesitate in the slightest. Spreading his wings, he flew straight toward the Mother Crystal storage site in Pearl Military District...