The gray-robed members dragged racks out of the carriage, and also withdrew a type of carrying pack made of black leather.
“Quickly! Attach five javelins of the same rank to each jolster!” The gray-robed member expertly separated each javelin into two sections--head and tail end-- and attached them to these so-called jolster packs. A total of ten sections were thus strapped tightly to each jolster.
Rein was the only one of his group that approached-- the others hadn’t had the chance to learn the art of inscriptions. If not for Blacksmith Tiehr and his unique encounter with Master Yirn, he, too, would never have had the chance to develop such a skill. Inscription masters required many years and time, not to mention, an analytical mind.
“A new initiate? One moment.” A stocky gray-robed figure indicated.
A few heartbeats later, the stocky gray-robed figure brought forth a full decked-out jolster to Rein’s side. “Rein, is it? The watcher has stated that you have reached the level of some understanding of initial shell realm inscriptions.”
The watcher… Rein sifted through his memories-- this watcher is likely the woman who he met when signing up to join the Hall of Heroes, and precisely the lady who spoke through the Hall of Heroes robes.
The stocky gray-robed figure detached two ends of the same javelin from the jolster, and held up one such that Rein could see the cross section of the javelin.
“See that? It’s made of five concentric layers. On activating the inscriptions, depending on the order, you can create different types of combinations, though it’s advised to use the outermost layer first.”
What an impressive mastercraft. Rein could see that every single one of those layers had interlocking inscriptions through its metallic material, though obviously, he could only see hints of these inscriptions in the inner four layers through gaps in the surface layer.
Now, Rein had long learnt from his half-senior Chenhr on how to manipulate these javelins, the true modern day ‘Spear of Heaven.’ However, the Hall of Heroes constantly renewed their designs, so Rein patiently waited for the gray-robed figure to explain the system.
The stocky gray-robed figure then attached the two ends of the javelin together, and rotated the top pointed end until the two segments locked into place. It was a full fifteen plus feet in length.
He then held the now complete javelin in the middle, and flapped his wrist like a grounded flopping fish.
The javelin amazingly bent and swayed in accordance to his movements, yet did not break. “A unique metal alloy. The javelin was sent to our branch fully made, from the home realm of the Halls. Allows the javelin to maneuver through the air without breaking and strike targets like thunder.”
Rein was not given any additional time to ponder the information, as the stocky fellow immediately followed that up by putting the javelin to the side and opening a rough paper scroll.
The scroll had diagrams of all the five concentric layers of the javelin, depicting every single interlocking inscription per layer.
“Do you understand all these?” The gray-robed man questioned.
Rein scanned rapidly over the diagrams-- the inscriptions were all below the shell realm, and completely basic in nature. They were simple spells, similar to the box of bombs he once used-- simple explosion type spells of various elements. These being inner realm inscriptions meant one thing-- the javelin would be destroyed once deployed, as it would need to sacrifice its body as a source of attack.
Rein could guess that some of the other javelins from the racks probably had much more advanced magics inscribed. Unfortunately, he only had an initial understanding of shell realm inscriptions, and he himself would not be able to supply the necessary aurae for higher realmed inscriptions anyway.
“For simplicity’s sake, all these five in your jolster are one and the same. Take a moment to refresh your understanding of javelin control,” the gray-robed man said as he pointed at a specific part on the scroll that demonstrated how to change the javelin’s direction mid-flight.
Rein took a moment to quickly examine these controls-- they were all inscriptions pertaining to qualities of the wind, that act to slightly shift the tail-end of the javelin to redirect its flight.
Last of all, Rein received a bottle of five pills. The stocky gray-robed man wasted no more time. “Pills that will give you the temporary ability to influence your surroundings with your aurae, like an outer advancer. Lasts around twenty heartbeats. One per javelin such that you can activate its magics during its flight. No lasting damage unless you ingest too many of them in a short time.” He paused then clarified. “And by too many, I mean more than ten.”
How succinct. When Rein heard of the effect of these pills, he remembered how that dragon-in-human-form Mystrygon had ‘assisted’ him in reaching out with his aurae to form Mystrygon’s escape portal.
He wondered whether these magical pills could be abused for combat, but the limit was around ten. That wouldn’t be a particularly long period a lower ranked advancer could augment themselves-- though certainly useful in a life-threatening moment.
He bound the jolster with the eight sections-- the four remaining javelins-- to his back, and then picked up the already complete javelin. The weight slightly leaned towards the tips, no doubt, in order to help it fly true.
“Ready?” Xeeseir’s eyes ran over the length of the javelin. The moonlight gave it a soft dark metallic sheen with glimpses of bright reflection from the many shallow indentations of the inscriptions. Definitely a technological marvel.
“Mmm.” Rein was somewhat nervous with anticipation. These javelins were truly the de facto ‘Spear of Heaven’ that he had learnt about.
The group of seven reformed their positions. However, this time, Rein stood at the back along with Xeeseir-- he was likely to get targeted since he now held a rather intimidating and visible javelin.
Rein strode back to battle with his head held high. The javelin in hand made him feel like an ancient god of war marching to victory!
Their surrounding environment soon brightened, but not because the sun was rising. Though the battles had been stressful, barely any time had passed since their dinner. No-- the brightness came from the amount of magical arts being thrown around on the battlefield!
“Defensive positions. Focus on defense and we will shift our position as necessary.” Xeeseir clearly had a fair amount of experience with advancer battles.
Rein observed the scene in front of him. Although they had dispatched those four enemies, in reality, the chaotic battlefield had barely changed, except for the fact that the ancient chest layered with archaic runes and escorted by a dwindling number of automatons was now mired in the central area of the plateau, surrounded by small-scale clashes between different factions on all sides.
Rein hefted the javelin onto his shoulder and took a deep breath. When he gazed upwards at those figures floating into the sky, he felt himself burned by multiple glares.
Immediately, a few of those figures withdrew at a speed invisible to Rein’s eye. One figure belonging to a race of beasts let out an echoing yowl, leading all members belonging to the demon faction to withdraw from both the sky and ground battle. Many of these half-human forms darted away on all-fours.
Rein was under no misconception that they feared him. It was the javelin resting gently on his shoulder-- and many other shoulders-- that they feared!
His companions waited patiently, while darting their eyes around to ensure the group would not receive any sudden ambush. Xeeseir, instead, looked up at the sky, wary of the powerful figures that remained floating in the sky.
A square-faced man in a bright silver plate armor set polished to have a wavy pattern hovered at the front of the advancers from the Evergreen Mountains’ great sects.
A rather odd detail that Rein noticed was that this burly man seemed to be wearing multiple layers of this same thin armor on top of each other. Normally, this would be difficult to tell, but the man’s movement had caused those layers to shift their positions slightly, thus revealing a hint of the underlying layers. In the front of his chest was the sigil of three circles, each larger than the other, creating a sort of hypnotizing effect.
Upon seeing the appearance of many javelins of heaven, this man immediately let off a voice that reverberated within all ears like a pounding drum in a narrow street.
“Target the javelin users! Limit their influence. Ensure they have no chance to even focus on their javelin control for even a single breath of time!”
His words had an immediate effect, as many of the advancers on the ground that carried the sigils of the great sects immediately regrouped and began identifying and targeting the Hall of Heroes’ javelin users. Except Rein!
Rein had already begun circulating the aurae through his veins to operate the ‘aura restraint’ skill! With so many bodies around, and many on the ground being only shell advancers, Rein had practically turned invisible! He knew early on that of course, the users of these javelins would be targeted.
“Wait! Where’s Rein?” Chirh twisted his neck left and right with a pale face.
“He’s right here.” It was Wilo who pointed directly at Rein at the back of the group. Chirh wide eyes seemed to drift past Rein’s body. Then Chirh narrowed his eyes and followed Wilo’s finger to finally find his sight filled with Rein’s figure. It was as if his eyes had previously created a blindspot that obscured Rein!
Rein had to admit, he was somewhat alarmed that his ‘aura restraint’ skill seemingly had no impact on Wilo.
Many other members of the team also needed help to focus their gaze onto Rein, with the exception of not just Wilo, but also Suxeire. Unlike her twin sister, Suxeire had no interest in Chirh’s confusion and simply kept scanning for any approaching enemies.
“Let's choose this spot.” The team now stood on the edge of a row of trees slightly elevated on the edge of the plateau.
“Prepare your defenses,” Xeeseir ordered as he chopped down his arm with determination. “We will kill any that attempt to attack Rein. If the enemy is too strong, we will delay them such that Rein can carry out the javelin attacks!”
Rein took a deep breath and exhaled to refine his focus. He then popped one of those special unnamed pills into his mouth. With a single bite, the pill completely melted into a burning liquid that diffused through the gums of his inner mouth. Rein felt the same sensation as when that human-formed dragon poured his aurae into Rein’s body. His eyes could now see waves of colored aurae cascading around in the air like an ink painting
He extended a string of his aurae into the javelin, and immediately felt a magical connection to the armament. The javelin now became essentially an extension to his arm!
Identifying an area where he could see no Hall members in the line of fire, Rein lunged forward on one leg and with a twist of his torso, let the javelin fly!
He then sat down cross-legged and held out his right arm with three fingers pointed, using his temporary aurae connection to control the javelin. He scrunched his eyebrows, barely able to maintain his focus-- it was no easy task maintaining the connection with the borrowed power of the pill.
He had already planned a course of action. A blast of green wind aurae swirled at the tail end of the javelin as if further accelerated in its speed of flight. The inscriptions at the front then lit up, turning the front half of the javelin white-hot.
The enemies Rein had targeted did not even have time to react as the javelin tore through the air at chest height parallel to the ground, and punctured through one torso after another, with all the wounds forming cylindrical carbonized flesh!
Rein had to marvel over the strength of the javelin. For it to even puncture through the skin-armor of a shell advancer, the weapon must either be made of a unique material, or the combination of the inscriptions on the javelin must be immaculate. Or both!
Rein then clapped his hands together, and the outermost layer or the javelin shattered, shelling a whole area with deadly micro-blades. This was simply a combination of a shatter spell that broke the outer layer into bits, and an exploding spell that sent the sharp bits through the enemies on the battlefield.
At this point, the javelin had already gone through tens of bodies and injured a crowd with its shatter spell. Still, the javelin with its four remaining layers bolted through the air unimpeded. Only ten heartbeats had passed.
The same green aurae activated at the tail end of the javelin again but slightly to the side, causing the javelin to bend as Rein readjusted its direction, aiming at yet another section of enemies.
The fourth layer had a slight variation. Once again, the layer shattered, flinging bits everywhere in the battlefield. A heartbeat later, each of these individual bits also exploded, each with different elemental qualities.
Some were a type of metallic spell that delivered a million micro cuts onto the bodies of those in range. Some seemed less deadly, only temporarily encasing and freezing individuals within their blast range. However, on such a chaotic battlefield where multiple factions are competing, such a situation was equivalent to death!
There were still three remaining layers on the javelin. With some layers gone, the javelin seemed to fly with even greater speed, as Rein controlled it to curl around in a wide loop to redirect it to another location. This time, he aimed at a group in the process of harassing and disrupting a javelin user’s control.
By now, the situation had completely changed. The Hall of Heroes’ escort unit was making ground again. Many of the enemy combatants caused some javelins to suddenly drop to the ground before A second layer could even be activated. Still, the deaths caused by the javelins were rising by the moment. Some had even started zigzagging away, hoping the movement would allow them to avoid any of these javelins’ flight path. After all, Rein was not the only one wielding such a javelin.
Rein’s position remained thoroughly undetected due to his ‘aura restraint’ and thus his javelin was not impeded in any shape or form. This was of no surprise. Shell advancers are only in the process of developing the ability to interact with the environment through aurae tendrils, and so simply do not have the ability to see through Rein’s ‘aura restraint’ that blended him in with his surroundings!
Thus, Rein’s unimpeded javelin shone the brightest in a devastating fashion among the number of gleaming needles that swam through the battlefield, dropping flies to the cold hard ground.
One obvious question came to Rein’s mind. Surely, these other factions have a comparable ‘spear of heaven’ in their arsenal? If so, there must be a reason why they have yet to, or are unable to use them at this juncture. His guess? The great sects did not have many due to the number of inscriptional and blacksmith masters required to craft these weapons.
His slight mental distraction was costly, as Rein suddenly found his javelin frozen in space, unable to move even a fingernail forward--A burly hand had clamped onto the javelin from the sky!
Rein instantly knew his course of action. All three remaining layers of the javelin shattered into its component bits and shortly exploded in a cacophony of elemental colors directly in front of the man.
However, none seemed to have struck their mark, for an invisible wave radiated out from the man, washing the explosions outward away from the body. Once the aurae chaos dissipated, the man reappeared untouched, his plate armor a shining star as ever.
This person was none other than the squared-jawed burly man that had called for the advancers of the great sects to target the javelin users!
He wished to glare at the user of this javelin and was astonished to feel as if something was preventing him from locking onto Rein’s location. He closed his eyes and opened his arms, attuning to the world. A few heartbeats later, the man’s eyes locked directly onto Rein’s location!
He stomped mid-air and flew at a leisurely pace towards the seven. Rein had to admit that his heart nearly jumped out of his chest at this great sect leader’s movement. It is an unspoken rule in the advancer world that higher-realmed advancers should not target a much lowered-realmed advancer.
As for why? If two sects or clans went to war, without this rule, the two factions would simply specially target each other's new generation in order to cut off the opposing faction’s future! The issue was that in a large-scale war, this type of action would lead to an escalatory massacre, completely cutting off the future of a whole region, if not a nation! As such, this type of action is somewhat taboo.
It was then that Rein realized-- the great sect advancer might have deemed him a priority target due to the ‘aura restraint’ skill that made it difficult for others below the outer realm to target him, especially in such a chaotic crowd! This man might be the unscrupulous type that ignored unspoken rules when necessary!
