Risen World

Chapter 389: An Unknown Force Intervenes

Joshua, Henry and the rest of the group that had stayed behind to avoid making the territory war to easy all watched while standing on top of the wall. They made sure to stand away from the turrets with the constant loud sounds of firing coming from them. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to hear each other talk about what was happening in front of them. Henry had already planned things out completely for the guild members to follow during the territory war and that was easy to see with how well their side was holding up in the initial clash even though they only had about half as many members as their opponents.

From the start things had gone exactly as how Henry expected. Ivan was easily able to gain the attention of Dale the guild leader of the Scavenger's Guild. At this point it was clear that they were at a near draw when it came to combat capabilities. Dale had the edge when it came to brute strength and used that to his advantage often. He was also a little faster than Ivan, but that was balanced out a bit by the debuffs he gained as the fight went on between the two. Ivan was far better when it came to technique and used the long reach of his large sword to his advantage in their clashes time and time again.

Neither of them were able to get the upper hand over the other, but that was just fine for the Fenrir Guild. Dale needed to play a bigger part in the territory war if their side wanted to win, but Ivan wasn't giving him the chance to. Whenever Dale knocked Ivan back and attempted to go after someone else Ivan was easily able to get in his way once more and keep Dale contained to just fighting him.

Victor was like a mad dog that had been unleashed on all of the close ranged fighters even if they were surrounding him at the moment. Henry's plan had put Victor in the perfect position to put his talents to full use. Being surrounded Victor was constantly getting injured which only made him stronger as he swiftly took out any of the enemies that got to close or out of position. At the same time his injuries never piled up to much with the healing rain that kept him from getting to the point where he was in a dangerous situation. The longer the fighting went on the more damage Victor did and he was on the verge of taking down the vice leader of the Scavenger's Guild at this point.

Natsumi was flashing all over the battle field with her abilities without any worries. There were no strong opponents left to lock in on her as she rushed from target to target taking out some of the stronger members of the enemies' guild. On the other hand her sister Katsumi was keeping all of the Scavenger's Guild's attempts to take out their back line from ever really doing any serious damage with all of the barriers that she had up.

Robin's powerful magic had no problem blasting holes in the enemy's formations causing even more chaos. Her lightning strikes might as well have been missiles falling from the sky with how much damage she was doing to the back line. The healers on the opponents' side were having a hard time keeping up with all the injuries she was causing along with the rest of the mages that were supporting her. The fact that their healers were paralyzed half of the time that they were trying to heal people also didn't help them out very much.

Brook's set up in changing the entire circumstances of the fight did a lot to give their side a huge advantage in the fight. Henry decided to use her ability to manipulate the weather and create rain with some of her spells to their advantage. Having the healers learn a healing spell that relied on water for use seemed so farfetched when Joshua first heard about it, but now that he was seeing the effects it was having on the battlefield he had nothing to complain about. Such tactics could also be used in town subjugations going forward if they could find a healing spell that also had a purifying effect on the corrupted creatures within the haze.

All in all the battle was going completely the way they wanted it to. Although they were still losing some members on occasions during the fighting at a slow but constant pace from all of the spells from the opposing side along with the occasional loss caused by the turmoil in the middle of the battle, they were still coming out better off than their enemies. From what Joshua could tell they were probably losing one member for every four members that the Scavenger's Guild was losing. With the rate things were going in half an hour or so they'd have more remaining members than their opponents.

Even if things were going their way to a frightening degree they still followed the plan that Henry had set up as their forces slowly moved backwards giving ground to their opponents. This allowed the turrets to fire on a larger amount of the opposing guild. Brook also controlled the rain clouds to move back in a steady pace as well so that the water wouldn't end up healing their injured enemies as they pushed forward. With the heavier turret fire the rate at which their enemies were falling was even greater than it had been before.

"I wonder why they haven't noticed the trap that they are falling into yet." Julia asked with a look confusion. Joshua also wondered that as well. It seemed obvious that things weren't going their way even if they still had the numbers advantage.

"In the end this is a territory war and they will have to clear out all of us and enter our territory if they want to claim it." Henry said while still focusing on the battle in front of all of them. "Because of this fact they have to pursue us otherwise we can just rain down attacks on them from afar behind the safety of these walls and turrets. They know it would be over for them at that point."

"Plus this Dale guys seems to be the brutish type. He may lead his guild into battle, but hasn't really shifted their approach since the battle began. He came in thinking he could rely on his numbers advantage for the entire fight apparently." Adrian explained while pointing towards the guild leader of the Scavenger's Guild. The man was still wildly swinging away at Ivan who was parrying all of his attacks even when he used interesting abilities that gave him more strength or made his attacks more destructive. Ivan was like a wall that wouldn't allow Dale to get to any of the other tanks or close ranged fighters on the front line and that was clearly irritating him.

"That being the case I'm not surprised they haven't noticed the slow movement their making towards our base. We've been giving up ground in such small amounts that it's barely noticeable. It will come across as if they are naturally pushing our front lines back." Aito said as he watched over the fight getting the best view out of any of them.

"There's only one thing that I'm still a little worried about." Henry said with a frown as he looked at the rest of the group.

"Seems like we have this fight in the bag to me." Amy said as she watched Natsumi take out another squad leader keeping together one of the Scavenger's Guilds smaller formations. "I don't see how they can turn things around the way things are going."

"It's not them turning the tide that I'm worried about." Henry said with a sigh. "The problem is the fact that there weren't five hundred members in the enemy formation when they pushed into our territory. I had the drones count the number and there were only four hundred and ninety-five people in the enemy forces."

"Alright so their guild isn't maxed out. I don't see how big of a difference five grunts could make in the current situation." Adrian said with a shrug.

"That's the issue. The system clearly shows that their side had five hundred people participating on their side of the conflict. The fact that are drones can't find the other five people is a bit disconcerting. I highly doubt anyone can remain in stealth for very long in the chaos that is going on down there, so they must be doing something else. I just don't know what."

"Well if that's the case why haven't we seen them have any effect on the battle up to this point? If things keep going this way then we will win and there will be nothing they can do about it." Joshua asked a bit puzzled by the new idea that Henry had. If there were in fact five other people down there that they weren't able to spot out with their drones through all of the fighting then Joshua was a bit concerned.

"They might be waiting for the right opportunity to go after the key members on our side. If they were to take down Ivan and allow the Scavenger's Guild leader to wreak havoc on the front lines then the fight could start turning in their favor. Same could be said for some of the other key members on our side of the conflict including our healers."

It was when Henry started explaining this that Joshua noticed and oddity happening in the fight between Ivan and Dale. Ivan clearly had the upper hand as things went on, but suddenly he seemed to attack towards an empty spot instead of Dale himself. Dale seemed a bit shocked by this turn of events and went in to attack Ivan from the side while he was wide opening. Luckily Ivan seemed to notice this at the last moment and blocked the incoming attack, but the entire situation seemed odd from Joshua perspective. It looked as if Ivan was attacking someone that wasn't there, or even as if Ivan had gone blind for a moment and swung at the wrong spot.

This didn't only happen with Ivan either. Victor was put in a similar situation where he dodged into an attack that did more damage than he would normally be willing to take to amplify his soul beast abilities. It was way out of character for Victor and for some reason he wasn't taking down nearly as many enemies as before with several of his attacks missing or being blocked because they were off target and out of rhythm. Natsumi was dealing with a similar situation where here attacks started missing wide open targets after she came out of their shadows which made absolutely no sense in comparison to what she was able to do beforehand.

"Well looks like your right Henry. Something odd is going on." Adrian said with a frown as they all watched the tide of battle slowly shift with the small mistakes the key members on their side of the battlefield were starting to make. None of them liked being unaware of what was going on especially Joshua who decided to get to the bottom of it.