The Heavenly King conducted guerrilla warfare by digging tunnels.
My head spun trying to process what I''d just heard. But looking around, the chaos clearly proved this wasn''t a lie.
Tent fabric torn to shreds littering the ground, broken flagpoles and tent poles, overturned pots suggesting they were attacked during meals, and scattered campfires spewing ashes. Surprisingly, while there were many injured, there were few casualties.
"They cleared and shaped the collapsed wall debris to set up a camp watching the fortress entrance, but the dark knight appeared from behind the plains, bombarded indiscriminately, then fled...?"
"Yeah, those weapons he made from dark magic. He created spears and arrows to target supplies more than people before escaping, then kept repeating."
"Is this really how a knight fights?"
-Not just the weakest of the Four Kings but the worst lol What guerrilla warfare for a boss monster lololol
-Forget the Four Kings, a boss monster doing guerrilla tactics lol The whole hierarchy''s gone insane
-Mid-boss runs up 5 floors in underwear, boss locks fortress door and does guerrilla warfare, what a mess lol
-And he''s targeting supplies instead of casualties? This boss really knows how to play the game, deserves praise
-Maybe this boss monster''s AI is based on Korean data? I''ve experienced this often in other games, oh God
In a world with cannons and alchemical bombs, the fortress had multiple corners in a jagged star shape with the roof completely covered, and just one massive iron gate that the Empress had hammered on.
Yet the dark knight appearing from the opposite side of the plains to attack the rear of the base camp watching the fortress, bombing food and supplies with dark magic before fleeing, obviously meant he used tunnels.
Surely the balance wasn''t broken enough for a dark knight to use high-rank magic like short-range teleport. This was a world with "fantasy common sense" where guide archers detected living beings and guide rogues excelled at detecting traps and artificial structures.@@@@
So rather than hypothesizing he was some overpowered jack-of-all-trades character who could use high-rank magic on top of creating various weapons with dark magic to fight messily, it was more realistic to assume he simply dug tunnels physically.
"Did anyone chase him?"
"After being ambushed from behind, by the time we gathered equipment to counterattack, he''d already fled."
"Abandoning pursuit without hesitation the moment advantageous conditions ended, even with potential for more gains... feels more like a special forces officer than a knight." r?а??bΕS
The scene was busy with adventurers and mercenaries clearing tent debris, mages leveling the upturned ground, and priests treating the injured.
Seeing this, the Ice Cross Knights who had been silently following us rushed in to help clear space for new tents. Even Olek and Alisa were clearly bewildered that such a powerful enemy as a boss monster would resort to guerrilla tactics.
Well, the northern monster waves involved hordes of oversaturated monsters. The knights were used to seeing them charge recklessly like rabid beasts, but even they had never seen a named boss or higher lock himself away and conduct guerrilla warfare.
"Shouldn''t we first determine whether the fortress walls count as floor 60 terrain features or not?"
So the mages seriously put their heads together hearing our vague plan. Since mages and priests had never done such large-scale construction work even when establishing bases in the tower, they all seemed to have plenty to discuss.
Until now, mages had only done things like cutting down growing trees or laying platforms over swamps.
They''d never collapsed ground support enough to bring down fortress walls reaching to the sky. More precisely, other senior mages had already tried and failed, so it had never been written up in papers.
It was a legitimate opportunity to take up failed experiments and paper topics with the hero''s backing! Naturally the medieval psychopath mages who''d sacrificed their conscience to mana and buried their common sense below the tower had their eyes spinning wildly.
"Hey, don''t dwarven tools maintain underground cavities? What about using those?"
"Ah, you mean the red mana stones called vibration stones? That might work actually. I''ve never heard of spaces the dwarves dug for business getting restored."
"Hmm, hero. Could you negotiate with that Master Bobo? The stone dwarf with the vibration stones?"
The mages'' discussion shifted from Earth Control to what would happen if they used stone dwarf vibration stones to tunnel through dirt rather than rock.
...Oh right?
It was funny we hadn''t thought of this obvious solution, but the stone dwarves had magical tools good enough to build underground cities. Instead of controlling earth with Earth Control, why not just bring in construction equipment and push everything away?
"Right, I wondered why the fortress gate only got scratched no matter how much it was hit, but we''ve got stone dwarves. Come to think of it, acid solution melted that underground monster''s shell too? If this is some unknown alien metal, couldn''t we just bring in some dwarf uncles and clear it all away with brute force?"
-Always taking shortcuts because you can''t think of proper methods lololol
-But is bringing stone dwarves to bulldoze the fortress really the proper method? This guy seems to cheese everything just by breathing
-Not wrong though, the only one with two 6★ companions in this world right now, one natural and one awakened, definitely cheesing just by breathing
-I cheese but Han Se-ah cheeses too
-Anyway, bring that vacuum stone laser cannon and shoot a melting beam at the main gate to pierce it right? Let''s do it now I''m curious
Even the numerous viewers seemed to have completely forgotten about vibration stones until the mages mentioned them, excitedly agreeing.
Master Bobo''s presence was weaker than expected.
Well, that did get banned due to the Flying Harpy incident.
After such a shocking event, people naturally focused on the harpies and forgot about the stone dwarf gimmick.