I am presently running towards the watchtower. I am already late. The plan didn't account for me losing my conciousness, you see. I wasn't even supposed to provoke them. Instead I had to remotely trigger the water spear while leaving the room. The explosion would have left them dazed till I reached the watchtower. By the way, none of the Snowlords are presently in the fort, including the Lady Snowlord.
There is no use thinking of her, by the way. Even if she survives this somehow, she is too injured to make a difference in this fight anymore. That much external mana is enough to poison a person in the stage beyond, let alone these folks.
I have to assume that the third Snowlord is escorting her to a safe place at this very moment. That is good since the man could have killed me. I had fully lost conciousness from the lady's attack and that had left me vulnerable. He must have really been worried about her safety to not notice this.
He is not visible anywhere in my mana sense. I will have to rely on my defenses if he targets any vital location. (There are only really two now.) If he targets the ballista, I am enough to hold him back. (at least I can run away safely.) If he targets the formation, I can say that place is also well protected. All of my remaining troop is stationed there after all.
In there, the soldiers should be able to make use of their numbers to overwhelm the Snowlord. (They will at least be able to buy some time for me to react.) The storehouse is presently the location with the least ice mana present in the surrounding 100 kilometers. These creatures might have the strength of a third circle, but cut off from their mana, they will barely have the strength of a first-circle mage. Thirty soldiers all ganging up on them will be enough to get rid of even the giant. (Especially once the formation is active.) If possible I don't want it to happen. That would kill most of my remaining soldiers.
Finally, I reach the watchtower. It doesn't take me a long wait to feel the giant pop up in my senses. (He must have been carried really far. The mage hand caught him fully off guard, it looks like.) Thankfully, my stunt with the spear is already helping me out. Fighting all three Snowlords together would have been impossible. Just this one might force me to use all my aces.
The moment that I feel the giant's presence in my mana sense, I activate the ballista. Instantly, I feel a spear from the quiver appear on the ballista.
Fuck, I can feel him properly now. The giant has all of his tattoos activated. I can sense the amount of mana that is flowing into his tattoos. (even without using the little trick of the Ironskin.) It is like a whirlpool, dragging in every bit of mana surrounding him and all of that mana is focused on his body. (It makes him seem larger than he is in my mana sense.)
This overwhelming fear I feel while watching him is not exactly natural, by the way. Looks like the giant is using a variant of the presence spell here. It is strong enough to affect me as well. (Thankfully, I should be able to manage it.)
He is running towards the wall right now, each step matching a hundred of mine. He will plow through the wall like a piece of paper if he were to collide with his present speed. The Ironskin should make breaking through tough, but I am not confident with the mana I am seeing.
I aim and shoot the spear. The spear flies, hitting the giant right in his ankle. The force of the following explosion is enough to cause a small cut on his leg. More importantly, this causes the man to fall down. This impact is enough to cause a small pit to be formed on the ground outside. (I have to admit that I was aiming for his head.)
Already, he is getting up. I take out another of the spears and shoot at his throat. This time, he is ready. His hand flashes as he grabs the spear. All he needs to do is flex his hand for the spear to break into two. Even as he does this the spear explodes right on his face.
Even as the water mana clears away, I can see that no real damage has been done to the man, (At least he is not shifting any of his mana to reinforce or heal himself.) This makes things more dangerous. The giant finally reaches the wall. I can feel the man starting to pound away at the wall. The ironskin seems to be holding for now. Based on the tremors I can feel, though, it is not going to last for long.
I begin to send mana into the ballista. I can feel it crumble under my careful control. I have to ensure that the damage does not spread to the top. If that happens, the ballista will become useless. I cannot even recreate it if it breaks. The earth mana is needed for activating the formation. I can't waste it on the ballista now. It would also attract the giant's attention. There is no way that the giant will allow me to make the ballista again. The entire tower will be destroyed before I can even attack the man.
What I am going to do will damage the formation. (temporarily, if not permanently.) The problem is, I will be dead within the minute if the damn giant manages to catch me. I must be mobile and so must the ballista.
The goal is to hold it in my hands. The ballista is like an oversized crossbow. It is clunky to wield, but it is surprisingly light to hold. I will be able to use it. (If barely.)
It takes about a quarter of my mana reserves, but I manage to finally remove the ballista. After that is done, I quickly grasp as many of the water spears as I can. The instant that they are out of the quiver, I can feel the mana in them begin to dissipate.
These spears are not going to last the hour in my hand, though that is not a worry. After all, they will show their use or I will have to shift to my other aces. As I am lost in this train of thought, the giant punching through the wall forces me to focus. That is the cue for me to act.
The fort is a confusing mess of tunnels and pathways, just like any fort on the continent. It is a simple tactic to deter any invader. (It took me a month to get used to the routes in this place, personally.)
I hope to make use of these confusing paths to try and ambush the giant. A well-timed shot from the ballista at point blank range should still hurt the man seriously. Maybe enough that I won't even need to use my aces to kill him. As I think this, I can feel the wall vibrate as he finally charges into the building.
I am approximately able to tell his position due to the mana that he is emitting. (He is like a bonfire in my vision.) Let's hope that this is enough for this fight. The only way to do better is to enhance my mana sense, and that is something that I would prefer not to do. (Just the headaches from enhancing my hearing is already hard to bear.)
(After about three to four minutes.)
I wish that I could have recorded the fight with the damn bull. The ballista was too clunky for me to record and move stealthily at the same time. To describe it in brief, I almost managed to get the man a couple of times. He has managed to get me once. Just that once was enough as he shattered my left arm in the process, though I did manage to escape him in the end.
Right now, I am huddling to try and catch my breath while hiding from him. I don't even know from which tunnel the man will be making his move from. After all, even though I am vaguely able to tell his position, it is not precise enough to be sure.
He has also made me knowing the layout of the fort useless. After all, he is charging through the walls like a blind bull popping up from anywhere. Thankfully, his mana sense is not as sensitive as mine, or I would already be dead. I have completely exhausted my spears as well. So I have no way of striking the giant at this moment. Most of my strikes were misses anyway, with only three hitting the man.
The first time he got hit was the only time I managed to injure him meaningfully. I had accidentally stumbled as I was lining the shot then. (The ballista is roughly as big as I am, so handling it is clumsy.) Thankfully, I had the shot ready already. It nearly took the head of the giant, though as bad luck would have it, he blocked it with his hand at the last moment. I assume quite a bit of damage was done to his hand, though. (The man moved a lot of mana to reinforce his arm.)
The second shot was worse. This shot was taken from a tunnel with a turn at one end. I released the shot the moment that he was taking the turn. I had assumed it would catch him off guard, and it did. This time it hit his chest, though, his tattoos seemed to have blocked it for him. I don't know how this was done as it grows bright enough for spots to appear in my eyes. Making things that bright is being wasteful with your mana if you ask me. (I don't think it is a problem for them in this land. Even now, I can feel the man sucking all the ice mana in the area.)
The third shot was the most disastrous for me. The shot was ready and primed to ambush the man as he popped up in front of me. He punched through the fucking wall and grasped me by the hand. I dropped my ballista as I jumped back, trying to dodge him. The pang of pain that I feel is enough to cause my head to blank out. Still, the shot did get fired, striking the man in the back.
The suddenness of the shot is the only thing that saved me as he drops me in surprise. I disappear into the fort as the man recovers from the shot. That ballista has been completely broken in this process. That leaves me with no way to strike him presently.
I guess I should start making my way to the core already. I can activate the formation from anywhere in the fort, but it would be best to do it closer to the core. I will move once I can confirm that the man is not anywhere nearby. I still have the nasty surprise, but the barrier is the better choice now. It will reduce the ice mana in this region. If not anything else, it will make the giant weaker.
With that, I begin to make my way into the fort, which is not a prospect that I am enjoying. I can see why the Snowwinders have struggled to hold these forts for more than a year. The Snowlords are experts at demolishing stuff. I can see the holes in the wall, extending beyond where my eye can see. It is as if the man is running through sheets of paper.
If they are given free rein, they will be able to bring down the entire place quite easily in half a day, Ironskin or not. Well, my formation and I are here to prevent that exactly from happening.
As I am thinking this, the world explodes on me. I temporarily stop feeling the pull of gravity as I fly in the air. It takes me a moment to blink back tears (I landed on my left hand.), but I finally notice the cause of my flight. The bulky idiot has finally found me and had in a single hit, broken at least a couple of bones. I can feel a throbbing in my chest that is nothing good, I assure you. I begin to push mana there to relieve the pain.
Fuck, I did not want to meet him, but I finally managed to get a look at the man and the damage that I had done to him. He is moving his arm gingerly. (His other arm is still big enough to single-handedly wrap around my throat, though.) His skin looks to have been cut in places where the explosion of water mana from my third arrow has struck.
The damage that I have done to the man seems negligible compared to his size. It has already started healing based on what I can tell. I could not see it until now, but he is massive, almost double my height and triple my width.
His tattoos also seem to have the ability to cause his body to grow in size. (I would need a class seven formation to achieve this at the same scale.) How in the hells am I supposed to fight the man? While I am looking at him, the man is also looking at me. I don't know how, but the man has somehow managed to express surprise without moving an inch of his face. How he did it, I don't know but I suddenly feel a twinge of annoyance. What is he doing, going about acting surprised like that?
Screw it, I am worrying too much. It is a bit risky to activate a formation from this far away, but I am pretty confident that I will be able to pull it off. I don't need to think, as I extend control strings into the ground, towards the formation core. Time to properly start this fight.