Chapter 457: Flat Fish
Adrian is in silent chaos. Because the citizens are not at all involved in this. But the authorities of Adrian are having hard times dealing with the mercenaries.
They are challenging every person under the imperial authority to duels and every duel is ending up with some serious loss for the authorities. All the mercenaries didn't have certain victories, but they did gain more wins than losses.
The emperor is having a hard time keeping calm and sent some messages to them. It is an invitation to join troops and get some special treatment. That is what the emperor thought about this.
He thought these people are trying to get his attention.
But he received no response and he got some unexpected news. A fleet of ships with the flags of the western continent is coming towards them and they were spotted by some patrol ships.
The sea between the two empires so small that they covered the distance in two days and in a day, they will reach the coast.
The emperor freaked out and since Adrian is a lot smaller than the western continent, on a Transcendent level beast and at full speed he was able to reach the coast by the next day night and he saw Arc and the troops still a bit away from the coast waiting there.
The troops of the Adrian empire are all gathering. But the superiors of the troops are not in the best of conditions.
They are just mauled by the mercenaries and now they barely recovered before preparing for the war.
With no announcement whatsoever, they knew that is a war. After all, would Arc come with these many ships just to visit and sightsee?
"Arc what do you mean by this?"
"Don't tell me, you don't understand this. This is an invasion." Arc replied sarcastically.
"That is what I am asking. Why are you invading? There is no bad blood between us. We barely have any form of connection between the two empires."
"Does an emperor need a reason to invade? It is for the conquest. Nothing more, nothing less. Anyway, I believe I am a better ruler. So, I will take this land as this is what I deserve."
"Since, when did you become this cocky. I don't remember being like this in the thunder god temple?"
Arc didn't reply to this and asked.
"You want to jump right into it or do you want to have some challenges? I will leave that up to you."
The emperor of Adrian looked at him with resentment. He understood that war is inevitable, there is no way they could go back now.
So, he looked at the two large warships in the lead and sent two warships of a similar size.
The naval troops of Arc aren't too many. That is something that puzzled him. Where did he even get that confidence without sufficient troops?
But he didn't care about that. The two large metallic warships are something that he didn't see before. So, he decided to test the waters and sent the same sized ships with troops.
There are not many people on the decks of the warships. Those who are present are few and they occupied some entry points of the deck.
The warships Sam made have two floors below the deck. The last one has the core and movement mechanism responsible for the motion of the ship and the floor above that has cannons all over. The deck is relatively empty and only has few cannons.
The ships have two cannons each on the bow side and two cannons on the stern side and six cannons on the starboard and six on the port side.
When the two large ships entered the range of the cannons, the cannons on the bow side are aimed at them and they fired.
The impact shells moved through the air and landed on the ships before blasting on the deck. The ships are made of extremely high-level. Which made it hard for it to completely break it. But there are some cracks on it.
The damage didn't end there though. A purple mist came from the impact shell and it spread all over the deck around the blast region due to the energy blast.
This made the purple mist gather and when it touched the crew, they felt some burning pain on their skin. Then only they noticed that the purple mist is slowly depositing in the form of some purple liquid on the deck and the place is starting to corrode a little bit.
It is still not enough to cause structural damage yet. It is only some surface damage. But this made the warning bells go on in their minds.
"Defend against the shells, don't let them reach the ships."
The commander of the ships yelled at his troops and everyone got ready with long-range attacks.
There are two teams of archers on both ships.
Each team has five archers. They started attacking in the same way. But these attacks are not as straight forward as the impact crystals. They don't have a large effect on the deck. Rather they are aimed at the people who are on the deck.
But more than half of the attacks are neutralized and the remaining half lost most of their attacking power when they reached the ships. Because of the formations.
These formation nodes have actually formed the railing of the ship.
It is a bit elastic and versatile. It wouldn't completely block the attacks. Rather it wears down the energy of the attacks.
This way, it wouldn't absorb the attack by too much and the damage to the formation would also be minimum. But there are its drawbacks and that is if the attack is too much, no matter how much the formation erodes it, it will still reach the deck.
After the first failed attack, the archers didn't get another chance to make another move. Because they are keen on defending the ship from the impact shells.
They don't know what material it was made of. But they only wanted to destroy it in the air.
But what they didn't know is that the purple mist is seeping into the sea and if the blast is too close to the ship. It is still condensing on it.
At this moment, the commander once again yelled.
"Widen the distance and go to their sides, keep both of them in the middle."
The ships started moving and when they arrived on both sides, they realized they made the biggest mistake. The six side cannons made them realize they made a bad move. The commander didn't see the cannons as they are hidden from the front view.
The ships started shooting the cannons without any reservation. But this time, the two ships of Adrian didn't hold back and completely activated the formations. They don't want to back down because they are confident in their abilities to attack the ship.
The troops from the two ships jumped into the water and some of them started running on it. One could see the water is trying to support their feet instead of dispersing. This is the technique of the water elemental warrior mages.
Apart from that, the water elemental mages are also moving on the water and one could see that some fish types of beasts are supporting them. They are trying to get near the warships, while the archer teams are trying their best to cover them.
But they soon realized that the purple mist that is seeping into the sea is affecting the water type beasts. They halted for a few seconds, but this is enough for the impact of crystal shells to wreak havoc.
The formation collapsed after around ten shots and the deck was completely cracked and started corroding.
But suddenly the cannons stopped shooting and they saw the room which has stairs leading to the lower floors was opened on the warships and the people are coming out. Most of them are Great real cultivators same as the people they sent out.
The commander saw the people coming and squinted his eyes. The opponents that came out are not many.
Only ten of them came out from each ship. Six of them are Great realm cultivators and four of them are Grand realm cultivators.
The commander of the ships of Adrian is actually nascent and the soldiers who are trying to reach the warships are mostly the Great realm and Grand realm cultivators.
The Commander felt that something is not right with the number of people coming. But before he could think of it. He saw the twenty of them jumping down and just before they reached the water they took something from their spatial storage.
The water splashed and after it was cleared, they noticed that the twenty of them are standing on some metallic object which is oddly shaped like flatfish.
Not only that, but they also noticed that the soldiers are wearing some sort of helmets.
Before they could realize what is happening, the twenty of them moved in their respective directions. The metallic flatfishes started moving and they surfed towards their opponents.