Well, since I said I will stall them, that is what I will do. I go back the way I came and starts to run against the salamander army. I think they are about four hours away.

I will try to stall them for two more hours. I think that will be enough time for the villagers to evacuate. And it would take about an hour for chief’s son to reach the city and warn the guards about the stampede.

And at least four more for princess to gather her forces and sortie. That is in case that guild master managed to convince her to sortie.

I see the dust rising to the sky after running for two hours. Now that I faced it, it is kind of disheartening. From the looks of it, there is at least four hundred of them.

Now, how to stall them? I can’t hide from them in this plain. I can lure them from here and circle around to stall some time. But, after that, I might get caught as an instigator of this stampede. I doubt that there is anyone who can kill me, but if I get caught, I would be a wanted person.

And that would throw a monkey wrench into my plan. I already worked too much for my plan to go to hell.

So, that means I need to stall for some time right here, right now. So, think, think and think again. If I face them head on, I will be trampled to death. If I run, they will chase after me.

I guess, I can try that.

There is about three kilometers distance between me and the salamanders. If I’m to do this, I need to plan this thoroughly.

During my travel, I got an interesting idea from one of Alex’s memory. Strategic bombing. I may not have a plane. But I have the bombs and the birds.

There is a slightly different salamander that is tracking me and leading the others. So, what I need to do is to bomb that salamander to stop them from tracking me.

I’m sure there is another tracker like that. But after killing that one, I’m sure it will take a little bit of time to replace that. And as soon as the replacement starts to track me, I will simply bomb that one too.

So, I will my mana to take bird’s form and take to the air. With bit of tweaking I managed to customize Arcturus’s eyeball spell into my preference. I no longer need to see through it myself. I can broadcast all the pictures that spell is transmitting on my interface.

As for my bombs; it is actually like my exploding eagles that I used during my fight with giant bats in the crystal cave.

They explode as soon as they contact with the ground. My birds hover over the salamander wave. As I watch everything happening on my interface, I see the leader. Slightly bigger that it’s kin and color is much deeper. And other salamanders are following it.

And I think if I manage to take that one out, others will be like a headless chicken until another one takes the lead.

As soon as my bird gets overhead of the leader, I will it to dive down on the leader. It drops on the leader and bomb in its talon explodes.

BOOOM!!!

After satisfying boom, dust clears after few seconds and the leaders is dead.

I suppose my bombs are quite powerful. But problem is: they are not stopping even after the leader’s death. It seems my assumption was wrong. They didn’t even glance at their dead leader. That’s cold.

Still, my plan failed. They are gaining on me fast. I can get rid of the with enough bombs. But that would defeat the whole purpose of my travel. I need to stall them.

From prior incident, I know that they won’t change their direction even if I drop my bombs in their path. They will simply keep chasing me. Whew. Now that’s a vendetta.

So, I suppose that only leaves me with my last option. I stop running and turn around. I dug into the ground with my left arm. After that, I start to pump mana into my arm.

As my arm gets mana, it starts to branch out. After getting it growing, I stop pumping mana into it. And start pumping vitality into it from my world tree. I found out that my arm grows better and faster with vitality rather than mana.

There is only twenty minutes before the salamanders reach me. As I pump more vitality into my arm, it starts to grow at accelerated rate and branches from beneath the ground. As it grows more, it starts to form a wall of branches. Similar to the third boundary of The Forest, only much, much smaller.

I know it won’t hold them for long. But it is my only choice of action left if I want to stall them. After I grew three meters tall and thirty meters wide, I stop pumping vitality into my arm and start to pump water elemental mana into it.

As I do that, branches start to get moisturized. I’m sure those salamanders can breathe fire like their mother. So, for my wall to endure long enough, it needs fireproofing.

After making sure that my wall got moisturized as best as it can be, I start to shape my mana into pillars form earth elemental mana to support my wall from behind. There are hundreds of reptiles coming for me. My wall needs all the support it can get.

Salamanders reach me after five more minutes and immediately crashes into my wall.

BOOOM

The moment of truth. The wall starts to shake and tilt towards me. As soon as that happens, I start to conjure up more mana pillars to support my wall.

After a few seconds and hundred more pillars it finally stops tilting.

ROAR

I hear the salamanders roaring at me from behind my wall. At least they aren’t breathing fire like their mother.

Ohh. I think they are starting to crush each other behind the wall. At this rate they will climb over each other and get over my wall. But, since they are doing it unintentionally, I think I’m safe for a while now. I don’t know how long it will take them to get over my wall. Hehe. But I’m pretty sure it will be enough for me to build another wall. Hahahaha. I’m a freaking genius.