On Julius’s instruction 50 men with mana arrows Karmic power, 10 with mana bow itself and Augustus started shooting beast which seemed to be un-injured but unable to dodge any of them. Julius understood this was the only time they could take care of this mess before the beast came to its own.

“HHHUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!” screamed the beast trying to stand-up after being blown up by a volley of 20 arrows every time

“Cmon guys we can’t slow down yet, push him towards the ocean” Screamed Augustus while gulping down a vial of mana recovery potion.

“General, we agree!!! But those bastards sure like to take their own sweet time” replied another archer who too gulped down a vial of mana recovery potion.

Julius screamed, “THE STANDBY TEAM HEADS UP!!!”

After the scream, suddenly the beast’s mouth opened and parted more than half the width of the head, a triangular forked pink tongue in the head split up too and from it came out 500 different seeds which flung in the air all the across the ground where the army stood.

The soldiers carrying flags to relay information were continuously vigilant about the situation and immediately raised flags on the instruction even if it was from Julius and not Augustus. It was signal for contingency 3.

300 of the 1000 soldiers who were on standby for this very attack went into action immediately.

Julius in a reminder shouted “DON’T LET ANY OF THEM TOUCH THE GROUND DESTROY THEM”

The 300 leapt into action using whatever they had in hand to swat them to bits in air before they touch the ground. Julius too leapt into action for this one. Using a short sword to take care of 16 seeds, doing this was a walk in the park for him cause he could pretty much predict where each seed would land. It all happened in 30 seconds, Julius closed his eyes in irritation, he could see how many seeds touched the ground without information from his aides. 53!!! How the heck did these many end up landing on the ground he screamed in his head but still reigning in his anger he commanded “ENGAGE IN COMBAT!!! CONTINGENCY 1 TO BE OUT IN PLACE”

The flag bearers received the command and signalled following which the 300 people re-arranged themselves in 53 groups of atleast 5 people with skill that complement each other and positioned themselves near each seed like thing.

The seeds buried themselves in the soil automatically at the very location they touched the ground and at each location almost simultaneously, the soil began to wriggle and from it jumped out a green being; a skinny humanoid being 4 ft in height with proportionate limbs and a goblin-esque head with sharp teeth, yellow eyes, red eye balls, dis-proportionately elongated rear head, no hair and pointy teeth. They looked something out of a nightmare.

Julius started running towards the nearest seed location and shouted “REMEMBER IF THEY CATCH ANYONE KILL HIM!!!”

The most annoying phase of battle was in progress for Julius.

The goblins jumped out of the land in surprise and tried going for the leg of nearest human they could, the trained soldiers plunged their swords in the hands of the goblin reaching for their legs, most of them missed the goblins, realizing that the goblins were really fast. Three goblins got their palms impaled by swords.

“KYYYAAAAA” x 3 they screamed from the pain. One of them used its presence of mind to grab hold of swordman’s arm and pull him towards itself. One tug… one simple tug was all it took for the goblin to pull the soldier to its height and pull itself upwards. The soldier not expecting this lost his balance and dropped to the ground and as soon he hit the ground, the goblin almost sunk its teeth into his neck before ‘Syuk’ came the sound as the goblin’s head was split in half longitudinally, as a short sword went through it and stopped at the shoulders, as the two halves parted, Julius’s face came into view to the soldier. He shouted agan “REMEMBER BE A HUNDRED PERCENT SURE THEY ARE DEAD”. As per their pre-fight briefing, they were instructed that even decapitation not a surety of their death. While this was happening the other two goblins who were impaled in the hand went for the weapon of the impaler and the swordsmen of the team were alert and didn’t allow the goblins to shake their feet. Two of the members of the respective teams moved in and stabbed the heads of the goblins and split them vertically following their king’s instruction. Fights ensued all over the battlefield and almost everybody was engaged now.

In another location of the battlefield, a goblin grabbed the shield of soldier, pulled him towards itself; 6 feet tall human beings were mere grass dolls in the hands of the goblin as it threw the soldier the towards the other three members of his team. It then plunged its hand through the armour in the chest of the only standing member of the team; to make sure he was alive the goblin went in for its work first. It pulled the man down and bit down on his throat and then it happened, the soldier realised why Julius commanded to kill anyone who is captured.

When mana enters in a human body, it becomes a part of him, converting to life energy for nourishing his cells, helping cell division, carrying the dead cells in the blood streams and also becomes weapon for the person to wield. A conscious decision to split the mana into the various activities and even when absorbing, makes for a good feeling to the person but when mana is forced to go in a certain direction by an external agency the pain is unimaginable, it’s like the feeling of your blood vessels being pulled out forcibly. The goblin used its teeth to forcibly pull the mana in the man’s veins and chakra point out of his body forcing the soldier to scream, but since the soldier’s lungs were punctured, all that came out was the gargling sound of blood entering his throat “Grrrrr…… Grrrrr…” was the only sound coming out of the soldier’s mouth. It was a mere 3 seconds before the mana from his body was emptied, but each second was worse than any hellish torture to a mortal and as soon as it was done, the man lost all mental capacity cause of the pain and following that the goblin crushed the man’s heart. Putting him out of his misery, though reducing the man’s misery was not its intention. The soldier was only half right in his thought of why the person had to be killed and this was related to why Julius only came with a minimum number of people. All of the person’s mana drained by the goblin was used to permanently power up the beast by strengthening its skeleton and muscles. Julius saw this and ignored the soldier. A single soldier’s mana was of no impact to the general outcome of the battle and increase in power of the beast, he could not run around the battlefield saving everybody, each goblin was a formidable foe in itself even for him… and so the first soldier died in the battle field.

The soldiers were trained with nerves of steel, having faced many battles in their life time. The four others of the team too went in without wasting time, goblin ducked past them and went for the swordsman in the rear using its shoulders to dig into the man’s chest and pushing him away from his team behind, then it punched the soldier in his abdomen sending him flying in air for about 15 ft where he fell on his back. Just as the goblin latched onto his neck to suck the mana out of him, his teammates moved to kill him and goblin but hesitated, then came a golden arrow which went through the goblin’s head into the man killing them both on the spot, then came the ear splitting sonic boom screeching through air

“DON’T FORGET YOUR GOAL!!! KILL BOTH OF THEM OR MORE PEOPLE WILL BE SACRIFICED!!!” screamed Augustus.

The soldiers were hesitating initially to kill their own brothers in arms, but after the order, things turned into something a bit better.

“AAHHH!!!”

“AAHHH!!!”

“AAHHH!!!”

..

“AAHHH!!!”

Came sounds as men were dying left and right around Julius and with every scream the beast was getting tougher and tougher to push back, to the extent that now slowly the beast started moving forward. By now they had pushed him back by almost 8 km but the beast was now undoing that, step by step it moved forward toward the archers, undoing their effort and with every dying person the beast was getting stronger.

Julius had noticed this, by now 36 of his men were dead and they had only managed to kill 15 of the goblins, showing a testament of their strength and speed. The blade end Julius’s short sword was in the hands of a goblin right now and he was not able to pull it out despite using both his hands, it had managed to kill the entire team which was meant to face it which now Julius realized was pretty easy if the goblins manage to kill the first two people, suddenly he let go of his sword, the goblin on getting the sword stumbled back a step, Julius used the opportunity to stab the goblin with another dagger in the throat, he then tumbled picked up a stray arrow and stabbed it in the rear of the goblin’s head such that it came out of the goblin’s eye.

“Haah... haah…”

“AAHHH!!!”

“AAHHH!!!”

“AAHHH!!!”

..

“AAHHH!!!”

“Haah… haah,”

Julius did not know where to go next. It was not like him to be indecisive at critical phases but he had to be sure not to make a mistake because he had an idea of what the 11 ft tall monster would do should it get charged up again with the mana it was continuously getting.

“Should I charge in right now?? We still do not know a way to kill him!! If I move in right now, it will pan-out exactly like how it did in my vision”

So he conserved his energy and continued taking care of goblins, slowly the number of goblins reduced, even though they were way stronger and faster than the soldiers, but each time a goblin was killed, more soldiers were free to kill others their kind, making it so that killing them became swifter and presence of Julius who single handedly took care of one goblin easing the pressure off the stand-in soldiers. Had he brought more people the chaos would have let small goblins to jump from one person to the next which was what they were doing now out of desperation. Despite having their limbs cut off they jumped from one host to another, crowding was allowing access to fresh source of food every jump and was powering up the host at the same time, which was now becoming abundantly apparent.

Julius was starting to realize the dearth of the monster’s power now, it was the perfect trifecta of strength, unbreakable defence and mana stealing ability while leaving killing its opponent. This being was a plague meant to destroy the entire kingdom. This has to have been done by an external party.

By now 113 of his soldiers were killed and 3 of the goblins were left. Julius simply steped forward to take care of them, preventing any further causalities, but just as he moving in to face them, he stopped and looked in the direction of the beast, the beast was once again going to open its maw parting more than half the width of the head of the beast, this was probably the end of the line for the soldiers when Julius turned towards Brachios the royal mage probably the strongest individual in the nation and screamed “INITIATE CONTINGENCY 2!!!”

“My liege, the area of this field larger than what we thought” Brachios said to himself “these old bones of mine should not be pushed so much, but since it has come to this” He nodded to the flag bearers and they took out conch shells from their satchels and blew into it signalling the initiation of contingency two. Brachios then conjured his staff in his right hand. Made out of aquamarine blue stone, it looked like a thin 2 m tall cylinder, it was topped off with 4 claw like protrusions and in the center of it all was a blue orb about 10 cm in diameter which floated equidistant from each claw. He started chanting to gather mana in the shape of a red ball above his head. While all of this was happening, the soldiers went to their horses pulled out a 30 cm diameter metal disk each like clockwork, put their arm through the handle of the metal disc holding so that it was perpendicular to the ground and injected it with mana. ‘Shunt’ came the sound as a sharp metal sheet 30 cm in width came out from the disc and extended to the ground and buried itself in about 5 cm. Then 4 sheets of metal, two on each side left and right, came out from the same sheet. Similar to the sheet5 at bottom 5 sheets of metal extended to the top of the metal disk as well. Then two layers of sheet extended circumferentially around the central disk. The metal disk turned into a massive tower shield 1.5 m wide and 4.5 m high. The soldiers positioned themselves with their shield all facing in the direction of the royal mage and their back facing their war horses. A wall was built around the archers to protect them from the aftermath. Each word of Brachios’s chant added another layer on the red ball until it became a huge 2m tall lava-red glowing ball of mana on his head.

A soldier peaked from behind the shield and on seeing the mana ball gulped audibly.

Another started remembering his family.

Brachios knew he had to cover a huge area, but thankfully for him intensity had to be really low since the soldiers were in the line of fire as well. Despite this being his first step of action in this battle, his brow was filled with sweat and his lips tightly shut trying to concentrate. “Cmon Brachios, gotta leave a good example for your student Julia”.

As all of this was going on, out of the split head of the beast came a forked pink tongue which parted and spat out 700 seeds.

Julius brought out his disc and raised his tower shield, this was the signal to Brachios who let loose the spell. The red ball 2m in diameter above Brachios’s head released mana in the shape of a triangle which has a depth of 3 m touching the ground at the bottom, the vertex of the triangle was at the ball forming an angle of 100° encompassing the entire field. The ground sizzled form the heat, as the attack in the shape of an forever extending triangle engulfed within itself the entire battlefield, going on for a few kilometres from the continuously depleting mana sphere. All it took to take out each seed was contact with attack for a less than a second, but some seeds spread out and fell in the blind spot of the attack, some ironically fell behind soldiers and their shields and were protected from the blast. In totality a 109 seeds survived the ordeal and the beast came out of the attack unscathed. Oh the horror!!! The first time in the battle things had gotten outside of Julius estimates. Brachios was too out of breath to gather mana after the recent attack and soldiers were definitely not a match for what was to come.

Julius was stuck on what to do, little goblin might disappear if he kills the beast, but that will be no small feat and also that while he is doing this, the beast would continuously grow stronger. Julius did not know what to do when he heard a sound conch shell blow hard three long blows followed by two short ones. It was the signal he had been waiting for all this time, the signal for moving forward with his plans. Julius signalled the commencement of phase 2 of battle, as the conch shells and flag bearers signalled the entire army. Another 350 soldiers joined the fray to repel the goblins, they had gone to take care of the preparations of phase 2, they did appear with fatigue on the faces, but things were proceeding according to plan finally so they started destroying the goblins one by one, though it seemed like an even battle.

Rest of the soldiers and the horses sped into action as they re-aligned the ballistae and reset the projectiles with chains on them again, though this time the chains were different, they were coloured red instead of the usual grey colour which the previous ones had.

‘Boom’

‘Boom’

Came two sounds as the arrow shaped projectiles followed on their way towards the beast and the red chains followed them faithfully and like their predecessors, they uncoiled till the projectiles ran out of kinetic energy and crashed into the ground. The archers handling the beast were tired and were dropping to the ground due to exhaustion and mental fatigue. This was impossible to survive, unlike mana bows which did not constantly use mana, mana arrows continuously required them, they were one of the most powerful Karmic powers to have though they were equally exhausting. Firing the most powerful arrows continuously for four hours despite using mana potions was impossibly daunting task to ask for anyone. Only one left standing right now, the one known to lead the army even in the direst of the situations and come out victorious, Augustus. Standing and delivering the arrows to the beast continuously, Though the rate of firing had slowed down a lot even from him. The beast with boosted power had long since had the power to overcome the archers and had started putting in it moves to massacre the army, he would grab a soldier from the battlefield at random and corrode every cell in his body taking time with his sadistic grin.

Augustus was panting and had a splitting headache, his mana reserves had been emptied and refilled atleast 20-30 time today, his eyes, nose and ears was bleeding and his fingers which held the arrow had skin torn all over them. Multiple times, he had dropped on his knees and got up. He had lost his balance but on seeing his men in front of him dropped to the ground, he walked in front of them and took care of shooting the goblins who came for them, not letting any of his men from being attacked. On a lot of occasions, he smacked the beast’s hand when it went for one of the soldiers fighting the goblins using his arrows. The beast was already pissed and now all his rage was directed at him as it started running at him when the two projectiles flew out in front of him which were followed by large chains. The beast was confused at the turn of events but went ahead to grab it, Augustus used the last bit of the will power he had and conjured a blue arrow, the biggest he could and biggest he had in his life, it was larger than the projectile arrow from the ballistae, it had grown larger than 4.5 m, the longer it grew, the more it lost its form of a slender sharp arrow, it was growing thicker, with ripple like sparks forming on the surface of the arrow. Augustus’s eyes were losing focus, but just then he saw a goblin moving to sneak attack a soldier, just as the goblin jumped up to attack the neck of the warrior, there was a moment Augustus, the goblin in air and the beast came in a single line. Augustus let loose the arrow at the creatures, like the ones before this arrow was moving faster than sound, the speed at which it was cutting air was such that it pulled the soil along with it, when the arrow first came in contact with the goblin, it’s torso just evaporated along with its lower jaw, all that dropped to the ground were the 4 limbs and its head above the lower jaw. The beast on seeing the arrow come towards it became alert, till now it did not have control over its limbs and body, was still unable to control its power and could not move properly hence the simple manoeuvres were working on it so proficiently, but slowly it was gaining control of its limbs as it raised its hands in such a way that it wanted to grab the arrow and then it succeeded, it had managed to grab a supersonic arrow, the momentum pushed it back 3 m after which the arrow dissipated and the beast came out un harmed. Augustus on seeing this dropped to his knees and he then continued falling till his left shoulder touched the ground, his eyes were open and all he could hear was a ringing sound in his ears “Well… Fuck…”. Julius made note of the beast’s human like grin when it killed a soldier and the increasing dexterity at using its limbs.

Julius was busy taking care of the goblins when the horse riding soldiers picked up the projectile arrow and started running towards the intended direction, Julius ram towards the beast for the first time in the battle, before the chains could pick up tension to keep the beast from escaping. The beast saw the armoured king coming in and tried to swat him down using its large hands, Julius easily side stepped the beast and picked up the chain and coiled it around the beast’s torso like a noose. The beast tried to free itself from the noose, Julius pulled the chain and dropped it to the ground. The beast had fallen to the ground for the first time in the battle, it was pissed off so much that it didn’t realize that the chain had not corroded and shattered on coming in contact with its body. From its position on the ground, it tried to kick Julius standing next to it, Julius jumped over the beast’s legs and spun the chain around the beast’s neck.

It was at this time that the tension from the horses’ s continuous pulling and running had caught up with the slack in the chain and the horses then shot off with the beast in tow. The goblins were not perturbed by the incident continued their massacre of the soldiers. Julius didn’t stay with the army any longer and jumped on his horse and rode parallel to the dragged beast; the beast, in an attempt to to stop the charade, then dug its foot in the ground and dragged it, after a few ten meters the horses were stopped in their tracks. The beast then used its hands to grab the chains and pulled, almost pulling the soldiers off their horses. Horses were straining their maximum almost falling to the ground in the process. Beast only now realized the fact that the chains were not corroding, it became frantic and dug its feet further in. Julius saw this and pulled out his lance from his horse and struck the beast as he would a ball in a match ‘Smack’ right across its torso sending it flying in air, without any leverage to stop himself the journey began. The beast was perplexed again, though he was not hurt but the lance managed to smack it across the park without being shattered.

Excitement was evident in the Julius’s voice as he said “C’mon guys move it”. 8 other horse riders moved to pull on the chains while the beast was being sent across the field towards the intended location. The beast trying to break the chains but the 15 cm diameter links which were coated with something red were beyond his strength, atleast for now and the coating didn’t corrode atleast the rate at which it corroded was very slow, it could not break free from its bindings. Every time it fell Julius would send it flying, giving it no traction at all. The beast was helpless in the matter and all it could do was wait to see where its captors were taking it while trying to break the chain. After travelling 60 km the troop reached the shores of the ocean. They loaded the projectile in ballistae and shot and hit the bulwark of two other warships, similar to ones which fought off the pirate invasion of the kingdom.